Abit KT7A lockup

[Stefpet]

I'm experiencing random lockups running 1.2GHz (133x9, CAS2 mem) on my Abit KT7A (KT133A) motherboard with a geforce 2 MX.

I've tried to lower everything but they still happen, the strange thing is that it always seems to happen when there is no cpu load. I may play UT/Quake/AOE2 for hours without any problems, but then when walking away to get something to eat, it all hangs (black screen) and reset is the only way to go.

I've tried with different bios' (currently running wz04) without any sign of difference.

Is there someone else experiencing the same problem or and suggestions of a solution?

Thanks!

 

[butthead]

Solution: Upgrade to an A7V133.

Seriously, I just got my 1ghz rig setup with an abit KT7A-RAID. The board was smooth as silk, wonderful options and great performance. The instant I enabled raid however, all hell broke loose. Nothing was stable ever. Even without the raid enabled disk-to-disk transfer across the HPT370 controller was slow and erratic. Ick.

The A7V133 has been totally stable. Runs disk benchmarks in Sandra (which the KT7A would never do for me). It's only a little slower than the KT7A board with the 102A-1 BIOS update. My only complaint is that the KT7A would run my mushkin Rev 2 at cas2 150mhz+ with ease, but the A7V seems to only go to 147.

I was waiting for the MSI Turbo-R, but this board seems to be just as good if not better. What good is speed if you can't run anything?

 

[gtd2000]

Is this only when u r overclocked? What about when setting the standard 100FSB and multiplyer?

 

[butthead]

That was at -every- setting. I tried to make the thing stable for days with every FSB and vcore/vio setting possible. DOS-based scandisk would also hang. Running SB Live and AIW Radeon (the favorite unstable setup).

Something funny I noticed, with the RAID enabled (with my two 45gb 75gxp drives) that the 90gb array is recognized fine by fdisk but format will only report 22gb while formatting and hangs on writing the file allocation table. This happens on the A7V as well so I assume it's a problem with the format program?

 

[Pederv]

What OS are you running? If win98, do you have MSBackup installed? KT7/KT7A sometimes don't work well with MSBackup. Do you have a card plugged into PCI#5? This is the slot shared with the RAID controller and if possible is best left empty.

 

[Skiracer]

This isn't going to help you, but I have noticed over the last few weeks several people complaining about the KT7A-RAID and the IBM GXP drives. There may be a problem specific to this combination of hardware. Should there be a poll posted on this? Just a thought....

 

[Basie]

Butthead
Check the "Raid 0 block size" topic today 2/15 for a answer to your format question.

 

[MCS]

I had exactly the same problem. It turned out that the BIOS did not like the fan that I had plugged into FAN1. I flashed to the newer BIOS which does not require a fan to be plugged in there, and used a fan which runs off a molex connector. Problem solved.

Here is a quote from the KT7 FAQ at Icrontic.com

"This has been reported as being caused by the CPU cooler fans crashing the BIOS.
Some fans generate spikes on the rising edge of the tacho signal and this generates unusual RPM values, which the bios does not seem to like."

Please let me know if this solves your problem!!

 

[grendelkhan]

IBM GXP + KT7A = Lockups

Or at least on my system it sure as hell has. I think maybe a poll is in order here...

 

[gtd2000]

Now running my new KT7A and IBM 30.7 and all is fine - very smooth transition from PIII/BX6 - not even formatted and reloaded windows so far! Just plugged the old HD into the new motherboard and let windows change the drivers.
I am using the non-RAID version though!
Try running without using RAID

 

[billyjak]

KT7 Raid and 3 IBM drives no problems, get the KT7 WZ04 beta bios and try it.
It has the fan 1 connection disabled by default and solves some timing issues.