AK79D-400VN boot problems

I purchased this motherboard yesterday, and am having problems out the
wazoo with it. The biggest is windows will freeze right after the
black XP splash screen. Mouse does not respond, and the monitor does
not refresh. I can boot and work with the system in safe mode, install
and uninstall drivers etc, but no go for normal boot. I have
re-installed windows 4 times now, thinking it might be how i am
installing the drivers, the particular version of drivers, etc. If I
had to guess, I would say that the video card is not working once out
of VGA mode. The card being used is a 4X AGP ti4200 with 128mb RAM.
Also using a single stick of mushkin pc2700 and a XP1800 CPU. All of
these components worked great in the old MB, and ASUS A7S333. I intend
on upgrading the CPU and RAM later, the MB was just a way for me to be
able to upgrade to the highest the XP line will go until I can afford
to build a new system.

In BIOS I had a question or two as well. Should I set memory to run by
SPD or manual, and also I noticed an enable/disable setting for AGP
8x, should I disable as I am using a 4x card? Also what order should
drivers be installed? Video, then chipset, or should I just install
the chipset drivers, then vid? using the latest from nVidia's web
site.

Any help would be appreciated.

AMD_Dually

AMD_Dually wrote:

> I purchased this motherboard yesterday, and am having problems out the
> wazoo with it. The biggest is windows will freeze right after the
> black XP splash screen. Mouse does not respond, and the monitor does
> not refresh. I can boot and work with the system in safe mode, install
> and uninstall drivers etc, but no go for normal boot. I have
> re-installed windows 4 times now, thinking it might be how i am
> installing the drivers, the particular version of drivers, etc. If I
> had to guess, I would say that the video card is not working once out
> of VGA mode. The card being used is a 4X AGP ti4200 with 128mb RAM.
> Also using a single stick of mushkin pc2700 and a XP1800 CPU. All of
> these components worked great in the old MB, and ASUS A7S333. I intend
> on upgrading the CPU and RAM later, the MB was just a way for me to be
> able to upgrade to the highest the XP line will go until I can afford
> to build a new system.
>
> In BIOS I had a question or two as well. Should I set memory to run by
> SPD or manual, and also I noticed an enable/disable setting for AGP
> 8x, should I disable as I am using a 4x card? Also what order should
> drivers be installed? Video, then chipset, or should I just install
> the chipset drivers, then vid? using the latest from nVidia's web
> site.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> AMD_Dually

I had the same/similar problem. Everything I've read says to install the
video drivers last. The problem I had was with the nforce ide driver. I'm
not sure what the exact problem was but when I finally decided not to
install this *unapproved* driver my system started working fine. My system
crashed so many times I had to call Microsoft to explain why I needed to
re-activate Windows so many times. One time the system spontaneously
rebooted and check disc had to repair at least 250 files. When the system
finally came up nothing was there. After I rebooted the system Windows
said that it had not been registered and immediately shutdown.

One other problem I had was with memory. I had installed Kingston
Valueram ddr400 with an Athlon 1600+ processor. Definitely a problem. I
put in a cheap stick of no name 266 ram and it has worked fine ever since.
I guess it doesn't handle mismatched components as well as some other
boards. I bought an Epox 8rda3g to replace it with and it's been smooth
sailing ever since.



Roger

Roger M wrote:
> AMD_Dually wrote:
>
>> I purchased this motherboard yesterday, and am having problems out
>> the wazoo with it. The biggest is windows will freeze right after the
>> black XP splash screen. Mouse does not respond, and the monitor does
>> not refresh. I can boot and work with the system in safe mode,
>> install and uninstall drivers etc, but no go for normal boot. I have
>> re-installed windows 4 times now, thinking it might be how i am
>> installing the drivers, the particular version of drivers, etc. If I
>> had to guess, I would say that the video card is not working once out
>> of VGA mode. The card being used is a 4X AGP ti4200 with 128mb RAM.
>> Also using a single stick of mushkin pc2700 and a XP1800 CPU. All of
>> these components worked great in the old MB, and ASUS A7S333. I
>> intend on upgrading the CPU and RAM later, the MB was just a way for
>> me to be able to upgrade to the highest the XP line will go until I
>> can afford to build a new system.
>>
>> In BIOS I had a question or two as well. Should I set memory to run
>> by SPD or manual, and also I noticed an enable/disable setting for
>> AGP 8x, should I disable as I am using a 4x card? Also what order
>> should drivers be installed? Video, then chipset, or should I just
>> install
>> the chipset drivers, then vid? using the latest from nVidia's web
>> site.
>>
>> Any help would be appreciated.
>>
>> AMD_Dually
>
> I had the same/similar problem. Everything I've read says to
> install the video drivers last. The problem I had was with the nforce
> ide driver. I'm not sure what the exact problem was but when I
> finally decided not to install this *unapproved* driver my system
> started working fine. My system crashed so many times I had to call
> Microsoft to explain why I needed to re-activate Windows so many
> times. One time the system spontaneously rebooted and check disc had
> to repair at least 250 files. When the system finally came up nothing
> was there. After I rebooted the system Windows said that it had not
> been registered and immediately shutdown.
>
> One other problem I had was with memory. I had installed Kingston
> Valueram ddr400 with an Athlon 1600+ processor. Definitely a problem.
> I put in a cheap stick of no name 266 ram and it has worked fine ever
> since. I guess it doesn't handle mismatched components as well as
> some other boards. I bought an Epox 8rda3g to replace it with and
> it's been smooth sailing ever since.
>
>
>
> Roger

Well, this thing does not even give me a chance to install the wrong
drivers, freezes up after a fresh install of OS, on the first full boot into
the OS........sigh

Dan

"AMD_Dually" <> wrote in message
news: om...
> I purchased this motherboard yesterday, and am having problems out the
> wazoo with it. The biggest is windows will freeze right after the
> black XP splash screen. Mouse does not respond, and the monitor does
> not refresh. I can boot and work with the system in safe mode, install
> and uninstall drivers etc, but no go for normal boot. I have
> re-installed windows 4 times now, thinking it might be how i am
> installing the drivers, the particular version of drivers, etc. If I
> had to guess, I would say that the video card is not working once out
> of VGA mode. The card being used is a 4X AGP ti4200 with 128mb RAM.
> Also using a single stick of mushkin pc2700 and a XP1800 CPU. All of
> these components worked great in the old MB, and ASUS A7S333. I intend
> on upgrading the CPU and RAM later, the MB was just a way for me to be
> able to upgrade to the highest the XP line will go until I can afford
> to build a new system.
>
> In BIOS I had a question or two as well. Should I set memory to run by
> SPD or manual, and also I noticed an enable/disable setting for AGP
> 8x, should I disable as I am using a 4x card? Also what order should
> drivers be installed? Video, then chipset, or should I just install
> the chipset drivers, then vid? using the latest from nVidia's web
> site.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> AMD_Dually

The AGP should be set to 4x for your video card, so I would disable it. As
far as the memory, either setting is fine, as long as the board isn't trying
to overspeed the memory. I don't think it would, but it's possible. If this
is happening it would explain your problems. I had some cheap DDR2700 here
that, if ran higher that 266MHz would do things very similar to what you are
having happen. Also, if I recall, XP needs Service Pack 1 for the nForce
chipset to operate properly, but I could be wrong. Always install the
chipset drivers before the video card drivers.

HTH
Chris