IC7-G freezing

Kenton Flaig · Oct 26, 2003

Well, this pos has developed a new way of freezing. It is still doing the cursor freeze that requires a reboot to get going again (I did the memory test and everything checked out ok. Go back to the 10/22/03 posts to get the details on this).

The new freeze occurs when I leave it unused. I come back, the monitors have shut off (I have them set to turn off after 20 minutes of inactivity)and it has locked up. With this freeze simply pushing the reset button interrupts the power but it never makes it back to the bios screen showing. Pushing the power button does the same thing, it shuts down the power but it never makes it back to showing the bios screen.

To get it going again I have to pull the power plug for a minute or so and then put the plug back. It will then start back up.

What's next? I'm close to screaming.

Colin Smith · Oct 26, 2003

As per your last article, have you cleared the bios, have you reset your cmos settings to default. What is the new graphic card you have changed to, do you have a power lead to each device and none daisy chained. Is your mouse in good working order and what type Usb or? Have you reinstalled the Usb drivers, have you remove first a piece of software, one at a time the same with devices. What are your temps like.

"Kenton Flaig" wrote:

Well, this pos has developed a new way of freezing. It is still doing the cursor freeze that requires a reboot to get going again (I did the memory test and everything checked out ok. Go back to the 10/22/03 posts to get the details on this).

The new freeze occurs when I leave it unused. I come back, the monitors have shut off (I have them set to turn off after 20 minutes of inactivity)and it has locked up. With this freeze simply pushing the reset button interrupts the power but it never makes it back to the bios screen showing. Pushing the power button does the same thing, it shuts down the power but it never makes it back to showing the bios screen.

To get it going again I have to pull the power plug for a minute or so and then put the plug back. It will then start back up.

What's next? I'm close to screaming.

Kenton Flaig · Oct 26, 2003

I am not over clocking when this happens and the memory timing settings are set to "By Spd".

I have two Matrox G450 dual monitor video cards, one AGP and one PCI.

My mouse seems fine and is the non-USB type.

I just reinstalled my USB drivers.

The highest CPU temp I have seen with Hardware Doctor is 52. The System and PWM (I have no idea of what this is) temps are always less than 42. I have a Vantec CPU fan and a ThermalTake case that has 7 fans in it so high temps are not something I should be experiencing.

This freezing happens infrequently, often going 24 hours without occurring. This is going to make it tough to eliminate individual pieces of software from the list of potential offenders.

I normally have Outlook, several mIrc instances, Yahoo messenger, Norton Antivirus, and several IE windows running.

Colin Smith · Oct 26, 2003

And clearing your bios? so your mouse is ps/2 could you have an Irq conflict then. These problems can be absolute swine to find. Have you tried to switching off your power settings as a trial.

"Kenton Flaig" wrote:

I am not over clocking when this happens and the memory timing settings are set to "By Spd".

I have two Matrox G450 dual monitor video cards, one AGP and one PCI.

My mouse seems fine and is the non-USB type.

...

and

PWM (I have no idea of what this is) temps are always less than 42. I have

a

Vantec CPU fan and a ThermalTake case that has 7 fans in it so high temps are not something I should be experiencing.

This freezing happens infrequently, often going 24 hours without

occurring.

This is going to make it tough to eliminate individual pieces of software from the list of potential offenders.

I normally have Outlook, several mIrc instances, Yahoo messenger, Norton Antivirus, and several IE windows running.

Kenton Flaig · Oct 26, 2003

Last week I reset the bios to the original settings and then changed only those necessary to get the Sata Raid drive thing to work.

I'll try shutting off the monitors off after 20 minutes thing and see if that helps the "new" locking up problem.

I just looked at Windows XP Pro Systems Information/Hardware Resources/Conflicts/Sharing and found several I/O Ports, Memory Addresses and IRQs that have more than one thing attached to them. Could these be a problem?

TomG · Oct 26, 2003

I can believe that you have IRQ's with multiple devices sharing them but I'd be a little surprised if you had devices sharing the same memory addresses and I/O ports...

Kenton Flaig · Oct 26, 2003

Here's what I copied out of System Info. BTW, I checked them under the Device Manager and none of them reported conflicts and I could not change any of their settings.

I/O Port 0x0000A000-0x0000AFFF Intel(R) 82875P Processor to PCI to CSA bridge - 257B I/O Port 0x0000A000-0x0000AFFF Intel(R) PRO/1000 CT Network Connection

I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 PCI bus
I/O Port 0x00000000-0x00000CF7 Direct memory access controller

Memory Address 0xF4000000-0xF40FFFFF Intel(R) 82875P Processor to PCI to CSA bridge - 257B Memory Address 0xF4000000-0xF40FFFFF Intel(R) PRO/1000 CT Network Connection

I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579 I/O Port 0x000003C0-0x000003DF Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head

IRQ 21 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
IRQ 21 Matrox Millennium G450 DualHead DVI - English

Memory Address 0xE8000000-0xE9FFFFFF Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579 Memory Address 0xE8000000-0xE9FFFFFF Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head

Memory Address 0xF1000000-0xF3FFFFFF Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579 Memory Address 0xF1000000-0xF3FFFFFF Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head

IRQ 16 Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head
IRQ 16 Intel(R) 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D2 IRQ 16 Intel(R) 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24DE

IRQ 18 Intel(R) PRO/1000 CT Network Connection
IRQ 18 Intel(R) 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D7 IRQ 18 Intel(R) 82801ER SATA RAID Controller

IRQ 19 Intel(R) 82801EB USB Universal Host Controller - 24D4 IRQ 19 Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATARaid Controller

Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF PCI bus
Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579 Memory Address 0xA0000-0xBFFFF Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head

I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB Intel(R) 82875P Processor to AGP Controller - 2579 I/O Port 0x000003B0-0x000003BB Matrox Millennium G450 Dual Head

Memory Address 0xEA000000-0xEBFFFFFF PCI standard PCI-to-PCI bridge Memory Address 0xEA000000-0xEBFFFFFF Matrox Millennium G450 DualHead DVI - English

TomG · Oct 26, 2003

try going to device manager and then select View Resources by Type and I think you'll find that the resources such as memory addresses and I/O addresses are not shared because that just doesn't work. IRQ's can be shared and with the newer boards supporting APIC which allows virtual IRQ's, you have more flexibility but will still find IRQ's being shared. I cannot remember the last time I had a resource conflict on a PCI based system (assuming no ISA slot based devices installed).

Colin Smith · Oct 26, 2003

My meaning was to clear the bios on the mainboard by means of moving a jumper and then returning it. If you do this be sure to disconnect the computer from the mains and on the first boot go into the cmos and reset. If that's what you are saying in your first line then fine, it's done.

"Kenton Flaig" wrote:

Last week I reset the bios to the original settings and then changed only those necessary to get the Sata Raid drive thing to work.

I'll try shutting off the monitors off after 20 minutes thing and see if that helps the "new" locking up problem.

I just looked at Windows XP Pro Systems Information/Hardware Resources/Conflicts/Sharing and found several I/O Ports, Memory Addresses and IRQs that have more than one thing attached to them. Could these be a problem?

Kenton Flaig · Oct 26, 2003

Ya, I had to do that jumper moving thing a bunch of times when right after I built it when I was having lockups due to the bad video card (I think).

These recent lockups only take either rebooting (the cursor freezing lockup) or unplugging the power cord for a minute or so (for the lockup while the monitors have been put into standby by the power saving thing.

I just bumped the chip voltage up to 2.7 v. and reset the chip timing numbers to those recommended by Kingston. Maybe that will help.

I gotta tell you next time I need to upgrade my hardware I'm gonna just buy another Dell next time. Trying to get this dog to run stable has been way too much work for the benefits.

The thing that pee's me off most is that I built the same computer that PCMag did when they ran a comparison test between different motherboards. I figured that they'd mention serious problems if they were likely to occur. Could it be that I am just having rare and remarkably persistent problems? Or, did they just forget to mention the problems they had?

Avinesh Bangar · Nov 7, 2003

Well, this pos has developed a new way of freezing. It is still doing the cursor freeze that requires a reboot to get going again (I did the memory test and everything checked out ok. Go back to the 10/22/03 posts to get the details on this).

I got the same problem with my IC7 and an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon AGP. I loaded a fresh install of Windows XP Pro and upon reaching the desktop, the cursor froze completely. The event log showed that ATI's 'ativdag' (video driver) was at fault, which was interesting since it worked fine in my Athlon XP 1900 system. Anyways, I swapped out the ATI and put in a GeForce 2 GTS AGP card I had sitting around, and have no problems since.

Anyone else experiencing the above issues with their IC7 and ATI AIW (Radeon, 9000, 9600, etc.) card?

On a side note, I purchased 2 x 256 MB DDR400 CAS2 sticks from OCSystem, which appear to be intentionally mislabelled -- they are actually DDR333; CAS2.5 -- anyone else purchase their 'OCSystem' ram with similar issues?

Regards,
Avinesh

h2so4 · Nov 8, 2003

This sounds like a driver issue to me. Have you done a search for Nvidia.*.* in your registry? There are some good guides to thoroughly removing old drivers around. Google is your friend.