ASRock 775Dual-VSTA

[theGressier]

Originally posted by: Nighthawk
Yesterday i ran into trouble with the Asrock: winxp freezes while loading:-(
When I uninstall the catalyst 6.7 driver, it boots up again. I removed all extension cards, loaded bios defaults, reinstalled winXP, same behaviour: only boots up when catalyst is not installed.
The ATI cards works in another PC... so i think the asrock is the cause. The strange thing is: a day earlier, the same system worked completly stable.

Hi,

I meet exactly the same problem : random freeze while booting with my radeon x800.

What is funny (I'm not sure) is that this problems occurs on the asrock 775i65G R2.0 which I was using last week. I exchange this card with a 775 DUAL VSTA because I could not achieve to have a stable pc. But It is the same with this card, so I was suspecting my video card because it seems to hang when initializing the driver (monitor is changing resolution).

The freezes are random but not so random at all : if I do a backup(ghost) of a working system, I could always restore the system and it is always working at the first boot. If I do a backup of a bad system, the system is always bad.

I'm really searching a solution before hurting myself (or my bankl account).

I will look to the memory timing as explained above.

Billy very very tired with this problem

PS : I was needed to switch off NX bit to install one software, I could not succeed to boot in this case. Does anybody have a solution?

 

[michal1980]

ok there has to be a driver that will automaticly throttle the cpu and fan. Please. the 805d I have in there with the stock sink is LOUDDDDD.

maybe not tornade loud, but loud. I used speed fan to cut it down 50% then its bearable.

at 55%.

but this is the g/fs pc tneed something more automatic.


just set it up, (did some testigg)

have issues with the wireless pci card. seems like too much noise in the case.

might try the drive strength to see if that fixes it.

(I know its ide releated, because the pc runs fine when the harddrive is not used alot with the card installed. , and locks up under heavey drive usaged. With out the network card, you can copy and past crap all over no problems.)

 

[lepump]

been having problem with system stability. couldn't even get 3-4-4-12-2 400mhz and fsb300 (->e6400) to run prime for more than 7-9minutes

i used to have ddr400 set in bios but when i put it on auto with a 266fsb i got cpu-z to show 354mhz speed. (with flex on)
prime95 ran past the usual error stages.

now i'm going 2-3-2-6-1 with the same settings 15minutes of prime95 and counting..
looks like it's the 300fsb or ddr400 setting that is causing problems for me.

-->hmm... 60minutes of prime, should be 'stablish' then. but cpu-z showing a 3/4 divider and 354mhz sounds wrong 3/4*266=199... but 354 with 266fsb should need a 6/9 divider. so i guess cpu-z is giving me wrong readings.

how can i get proper ddr speed info?

..and what does the bios drive strength setting do???
seems like my hdd:s are really slow and noisy.. something is wrong

-->295fsb seems to be stable also.. so a nogo on 300fsb then

 

[theGressier]

Hi,

so I still meet the random problem, I'm desperate and my wife too.

I tried to set my memory parameters in the bios, but it doesn't fix the problem.

I'm afraid this is a pure ati problem as both the 775 DUAL VSTA and the 775i65G motherboards with differents chipset have exactly the same problem...

I'm staying tuned if somebody find a definitive solution

Billy

 

[techmanc]

Originally posted by: theGressier
Hi,

so I still meet the random problem, I'm desperate and my wife too.

I tried to set my memory parameters in the bios, but it doesn't fix the problem.

I'm afraid this is a pure ati problem as both the 775 DUAL VSTA and the 775i65G motherboards with differents chipset have exactly the same problem...



Billy

What I do with unknown problems like yours is to make the system as simple as possible removing all devices not needed to boot. Start with bios setting using the optimal defaults and turning off all devices like com ports you dont use, then go into windows and make sure all your drivers are the newest available and with video driver make sure you removed all traces of old driver using ati uninstall util or Driver Cleaner Professional 1.5. make sure no overclocking is being done too. Let me know how you make out with that and what problems u still have. Also if you can test your questionable part in a good know working system and
try swaping parts if available

BTW I am currenty using a setup with C2D 6300 1gb pc 333 ram, ati 9800 AIW, and windows xp with 1.7 bios with no problems atm

 

[colche]

Originally posted by: theGressier
Hi,

so I still meet the random problem, I'm desperate and my wife too.

I tried to set my memory parameters in the bios, but it doesn't fix the problem.

I'm afraid this is a pure ati problem as both the 775 DUAL VSTA and the 775i65G motherboards with differents chipset have exactly the same problem...

I'm staying tuned if somebody find a definitive solution

Billy

What RAM are you using?!? Is it it AGP card too?!?
Try also explicitly setting as many of the memory settings as possible. eg. dual/single channel mode, flexibility compatibility (i found it worked best enabled), interleave...(make sure you look this one up properly, as your BIOS will refuse to post if you get it wrong and you have to go into recovery) --
I also tinkered with drive strength to normal as previously mentioned in this article...didn't seem to hurt...

And as above... make sure you have minimal stuff plugged in...

Disable things in BIOS you don't need/use. ie. i disabled the onboard sound/LAN, COM ports... etc...

 

[CKTurbo128]

I, too, have been suffering freezing issues with my 775Dual-VSTA board. I cannot determine the exact cause of the problem, but I believe it may have something to do with the IDE & PCI buses. I have the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA (BIOS v1.70) - VIA Hyperion Pro Driver v5.09A
2 x G.Skill PC4000 1 GB DDR RAM
nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS, AGP 8X
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
Wireless G PCI Card
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300 GB SATA HDD (On onboard SATA connectors)
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 11 300 GB SATA2 HDD (On Promise Tech. SATA 300 TX4 PCI SATA card)

I can repeat this problem quite easily. While installing a game or doing any heavy disk activity (i.e. copying files from CD/DVDs to HDD) and listening/watching music or movie files, the system will lock up with no chance of it getting to even the BSOD. However, the system never locks up when you install a game (or heavy disk activity) seperately by itself. Also, just listening/watching music or movies by itself will not lock up the system either.

I have tried multiple solutions suggested here, to disabling all onboard devices, testing minimal configurations, drive strength on normal-high, different RAM timings, different driver versions for devices, lower clock speeds, etc. I have even tried a re-format and re-installation of Windows XP, but I continue to run into the same problems. I have tested each device on another computer to verify integrity, and they all pass. I have run multiple tests of Memtest86+ and they have passed all tests successfully with multiple runs (never locks up, no errors).

Of course, all of these tests were done with no overclocking; I won't even consider overclocking until I can get the base system stable. Does anyone have any other ideas or solutions to this random freezing problem?

 

[techmanc]

Originally posted by: CKTurbo128
I, too, have been suffering freezing issues with my 775Dual-VSTA board. I cannot determine the exact cause of the problem, but I believe it may have something to do with the IDE & PCI buses. I have the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA (BIOS v1.70) - VIA Hyperion Pro Driver v5.09A
2 x G.Skill PC4000 1 GB DDR RAM
nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS, AGP 8X
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
Wireless G PCI Card
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300 GB SATA HDD (On onboard SATA connectors)
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 11 300 GB SATA2 HDD (On Promise Tech. SATA 300 TX4 PCI SATA card)

I can repeat this problem quite easily. While installing a game or doing any heavy disk activity (i.e. copying files from CD/DVDs to HDD) and listening/watching music or movie files, the system will lock up with no chance of it getting to even the BSOD. However, the system never locks up when you install a game (or heavy disk activity) seperately by itself. Also, just listening/watching music or movies by itself will not lock up the system either.

I have tried multiple solutions suggested here, to disabling all onboard devices, testing minimal configurations, drive strength on normal-high, different RAM timings, different driver versions for devices, lower clock speeds, etc. I have even tried a re-format and re-installation of Windows XP, but I continue to run into the same problems. I have tested each device on another computer to verify integrity, and they all pass. I have run multiple tests of Memtest86+ and they have passed all tests successfully with multiple runs (never locks up, no errors).

Of course, all of these tests were done with no overclocking; I won't even consider overclocking until I can get the base system stable. Does anyone have any other ideas or solutions to this random freezing problem?

sounds like its a problem with the hard drive controllers. I have seen alot of lockups with too many drives in systems. make sure you have newest
ones . I know my system has the VIA_HyperionPro_V508A drivers. You might want to try your system with the ide card removed. The problem seems to be a conflict when using 2 channels at the same time

 

[theGressier]

Hi,

thanks for the help, I've already tried a lot of issue and my video card/RAM/HDD are coming for my previous machine with no problem.

As I meet the exactly same problem with 2 motherboards with 2 differents chipset, I'm convince the issue is coming from the card (AGP).

If I do not install the video driver, no problem.

I think I'm going to upgrade my old parts...

 

[jas72]

I too am having problems with this board

I'm running @ BIOS ver 1.7

CORE2DUO E6400 stock speed
Geil PC5300 2*1gb paired mem
3D Fusion PCIe 7600GT 256mb
MAXTOR ide hd 60GB
Pioneer DVD burner DVDR-108

When I install windows I got a kernel32.sys error then a reboot windows continued installing and finished the install but the graphics card didn't install at all XP didn't even recognise the card until I installed the drivers but since then it's been running stupid it crashes at random intervals. I can run explorer and surf the net but after 10-20 minutes the pc seems to build up a series of errors eventually leading to it hanging. Infact if I reboot and login then leave windows running it will eventually freeze without me even running any applications. I have disabled reboot on error but I don't even get a BSOD.

I can't install the VIA drivers from the CD or downloaded it hangs the same with the sound drivers it hangs also. I tried replacing the GFX card with an old AGP one but it didn't make any difference to windows. Any suggestions?

 

[techmanc]

Originally posted by: jas72
I too am having problems with this board

I'm running @ BIOS ver 1.7

CORE2DUO E6400 stock speed
Geil PC5300 2*1gb paired mem
3D Fusion PCIe 7600GT 256mb
MAXTOR ide hd 60GB
Pioneer DVD burner DVDR-108

When I install windows I got a kernel32.sys error then a reboot windows continued installing and finished the install but the graphics card didn't install at all XP didn't even recognise the card until I installed the drivers but since then it's been running stupid it crashes at random intervals. I can run explorer and surf the net but after 10-20 minutes the pc seems to build up a series of errors eventually leading to it hanging. Infact if I reboot and login then leave windows running it will eventually freeze without me even running any applications. I have disabled reboot on error but I don't even get a BSOD.

I can't install the VIA drivers from the CD or downloaded it hangs the same with the sound drivers it hangs also. I tried replacing the GFX card with an old AGP one but it didn't make any difference to windows. Any suggestions?

I would try setting the ram to a lower speed and i seen a Flexability option in the BIOS that supposedly helps with memory compatabiliy or if you have it available try 1 stick of different ram

 

[jas72]

many thanks

Should I drop to 1 stick of ram and try a fresh windows install do you think my windows install is bugged as well as most applications seem to have a XX.exe caused a windows error and will need to close fault followed by a report this issue to microsoft.

perhaps a clean install with 1 gig of ram would clear it?

 

[techmanc]

i think the error is from memory timing not being set right when you fix that all your problems shold be gone. you should run chkdsk on all drives when you can just to be sure theres not any disk errors.

 

[lepump]

What are the IRQ assignments for this motherboard?
currently my sound card is shared with my graphics..

 

[jas72]

Originally posted by: techmanc
i think the error is from memory timing not being set right when you fix that all your problems shold be gone. you should run chkdsk on all drives when you can just to be sure theres not any disk errors.

correct well kind of...

my memory should be 4-4-4-12 667 but when i enable flexability it defaults to 3-3-3-9 533Mhz (as shown in CPUz) but i'm not sure of the accuracy anyway it's working fine now at thse settings.

 

[CKTurbo128]

Originally posted by: techmanc

Originally posted by: CKTurbo128
I, too, have been suffering freezing issues with my 775Dual-VSTA board. I cannot determine the exact cause of the problem, but I believe it may have something to do with the IDE & PCI buses. I have the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
ASRock 775DUAL-VSTA (BIOS v1.70) - VIA Hyperion Pro Driver v5.09A
2 x G.Skill PC4000 1 GB DDR RAM
nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS, AGP 8X
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro
Wireless G PCI Card
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300 GB SATA HDD (On onboard SATA connectors)
2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 11 300 GB SATA2 HDD (On Promise Tech. SATA 300 TX4 PCI SATA card)

I can repeat this problem quite easily. While installing a game or doing any heavy disk activity (i.e. copying files from CD/DVDs to HDD) and listening/watching music or movie files, the system will lock up with no chance of it getting to even the BSOD. However, the system never locks up when you install a game (or heavy disk activity) seperately by itself. Also, just listening/watching music or movies by itself will not lock up the system either.

I have tried multiple solutions suggested here, to disabling all onboard devices, testing minimal configurations, drive strength on normal-high, different RAM timings, different driver versions for devices, lower clock speeds, etc. I have even tried a re-format and re-installation of Windows XP, but I continue to run into the same problems. I have tested each device on another computer to verify integrity, and they all pass. I have run multiple tests of Memtest86+ and they have passed all tests successfully with multiple runs (never locks up, no errors).

Of course, all of these tests were done with no overclocking; I won't even consider overclocking until I can get the base system stable. Does anyone have any other ideas or solutions to this random freezing problem?

sounds like its a problem with the hard drive controllers. I have seen alot of lockups with too many drives in systems. make sure you have newest
ones . I know my system has the VIA_HyperionPro_V508A drivers. You might want to try your system with the ide card removed. The problem seems to be a conflict when using 2 channels at the same time

Thanks for the suggestion, Techman. Actually, I got an idea from your suggestion. Instead of removing the 4-port SATA 300 TX4 card, I took the two hard drives off the onboard VIA SATA ports and put them on the SATA card along with the other two hard drives.

Ever since doing that, my PC has not locked up at all, even when I intentionally stressed the hard drives via program installation and copying of large files from one hard drive to another, while watching a movie file. I guess the main culprit of my problem was the onboard VIA SATA IDE controller.

 

[Gary Key]

The VIA SATA controller is only SATA 1.5Gbps capable. If you have SATA 3Gbps drives, you need to ensure they are jumpered to operate at 1.5Gbps, if not you will typically see the issue you described. I have a couple of Maxter DiamondMax 10 drives (latter 3Gbps versions) that I will try on the board this weekend.

 

[XBoxLPU]

I am interested in is the maximum overclock I could expect from the combination of the ASrock motherboard and an 6300/6400

 

[Conky]

Well, I got my 775Dual-VSTA today and paired it with a E6400 and it was a very simple upgrade from an Intel 865 ASUS P4P800 and a p4-3.06. My Corsair PC3200 and X850XT AGP and SBLive remained... with all of the drives of course. Except the floppy... the floppy plug-in is positioned way at the bottom of the motherboard so for now no floppy.

The bios was only 1.3 out of the box but all booted up just fine and I updated the bios to 1.7 and installed the Via "HyperionPro" drivers and after several reboots every single thing is recognized in XP Pro and working fine.

Running nice and cool too with an idle average of around 35 and so far the highest hit is 43 and this was after running Q4 timedemos, HL2 Lost coast torture test, and 3dmark05 and 3dmark06. This with the stock cooler but I scraped off the factory thermal stripes and used some old Arctic Silver 3 I had laying around. Of course all benchmarks are way up over the old Northwood.

Now it's time to overclock! Not expecting a lot of overclocking from this board but if I can get it up to 2.4 I will be happy until my next motherboard upgrade. Heck, even at stock this thing rocks.

 

[Budarow]

Originally posted by: Gary Key
The VIA SATA controller is only SATA 1.5Gbps capable. If you have SATA 3Gbps drives, you need to ensure they are jumpered to operate at 1.5Gbps, if not you will typically see the issue you described. I have a couple of Maxter DiamondMax 10 drives (latter 3Gbps versions) that I will try on the board this weekend.

Good deal Gary. It sure is nice have an AT editor hanging out with us "commoners" I'd think you peeps would have seen a LOT of various issues pop up with all the hardware combos you work with daily.

 

[imported_Mongrel]

Just thought I'd toss in a bone...

I have an Asrock 775 based system that's been running rock solid for three weeks or so. Not really pushing it other than a couple of 4hour COD sessions, MS Combat Flight sim, and some large (100+ pics) Photoshop RAW conversion sessions.

I can honestly say I've not had even the slightest problem, lockup, crash, etc. at stock speeds settings.

Here's the 'list':

Asrock 775Dual VSTA bios-1.5
E6400
2GB DDR400 (2X1GB Transcend 2.5)
Seagate 320GB SATAII 7200.10 HD
Seagate 160GB PATA 7200.09 HD
ATI 9800 Radeon PRO 128mb AGP
Creative Audigy 2ZS
NEC DVD-RW
Samsung DVD ROM
Dual Monitors-Samsung 205B and Samsung 970P

As I said, this isn't an OC rig or anything-just a solid well performing system. Considering I moved up from an AMD 2800+ and NForce 2 MB, the new system 'flies' and has been a joy to play with. Luckily all of the above hardware is playing very nicely together.

The fact that it cost me roughly $300 for the processor and MB the bang-for-buck factor has been great.

Now, I'll have to see what happens if I get bored enough to push it...LOL

Mongrel

 

[imported_a2willia]

I need some help with this board. I've built more than a few rigs in the last 8 years, but this is the first one I've had trouble with. I'm updating from AMD S754 3400.

Purchased an E6600 and this Mobo. The plan was to carry over 1Gb of Kingmax PC3700 DDR ram, and my ATI 1800XT (PCIe).

I put in the bare components to boot up....video card, memory, CPU, attached the power cables to the Mobo and video card. The fans spin up (case, videocard, cpu etc), but there doesn't seem to be a video signal being sent out to LCD, so I can't see anything regarding the POST process. It just seems to sit there.

I have that initial 1.10 bios, but I've read reports of other E6600 users being able to post with that bios. I've purchased a Celeron D cpu in hopes of booting up and flashing to 1.70, but I still don't POST - same fans spin up, but no video to LCD. I thought maybe it was the ram which technically wasn't pc3200 - bought a 512MB stick of Samsung chipped pc3200 - no go. Thought maybe the video card was unsupported, so I stuck in my old Nvidia 6600 (PCIe) - still no go. I've switched the ram around in each of the two DDR sockets, trying each of the 4 sticks I have by themselves (512Mb only) - no go. Can anyone think of anything else for me to try? Did I just get a bad board?

I gave up and put the parts back in my old system and they are still working, so it's not my parts. The power supply is a 500W Fortran Bluestorm. I'm only running two serial ATA Maxtor Diamondmax 10s and 2 Benq DVDRWs - 1640 and 1650.

The CPU install seemed to be a snap - you just line up the two guides on the CPU with the 2 guides of the socket, close the covering and lock the lever right? I figured I wouldn't even get power to the board if that wasn't installed right.

Hoping somebody can give me something else to try. My cheap upgrade has skyrocketed with all the extras from troubleshooting.

 

[Ravenise]

Originally posted by: Cheex
I'm having some crashes as well.

Look at my thread in CPU/Processors and Overclocking.

Name: Random Crashes
Description: Please help ASAP

I too. Just bought the new E6400 and the 775Dual-VSTA... It was crashing in windows xp 64bit and xp. In windows x64 it would come up with the BSOD, but in XP it simply freezes everything. The problem worsens with overclocking... but even without overclocking, the most relaxed timings possible, and the lowest multiplier this motherboard can do, it still crashes. It happens particularly while loading CPU-Z, CrystalCPUID, and SiSoftware Sandra 2007 Lite; if someone else with similar problems could try loading those programs also... simply close/reload/close/reload and so on if it doesn't happen right away. The benchmarks in SiSoft also cause problems eventually. I can play games most of the time in XP without trouble. However Call of Duty 2 froze the PC on exit once. While using 3DMark 2005/2006, I noticed that in Windows Xp x64 the computer would crash as I would exit the running benchmark, or after it completed, I think it may have been happening with other 3D applications. XPx64 ati's drivers, the lan XP driver...etc would freeze my computer. Now im sticking with XP, its more stable. My computer does also crash on fairly random intervals. I havent tried turning my harddrive setting onto "Normal" yet, but it is running on "High." (correction- it was on normal) I ran microsofts memory tester, which is right up there with memtest, no errors found.. I figure its not supprising considering the other accounts of problems here. Can't recall if i turned of dual channel... that will be my next step if the harddrive tweak doesn't work. I also notice that the "system interupt controller" isnt installed. I will update with new info asap.

my hardware/shared irq list:

PCI IRQ16: Radeon x850 & OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
PCI IRQ21: Via Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller & VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller
PCI IRQ23: VIA Compatable Fast Ethernet Adapter & USB Universal Host Controller & VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller
ISA IRQ9: Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System & SCSI/RAID Host Controller

That last one looks suspicious, what do you think?

I have an ATI Radeon X850 XT AGP
512x2 Samsung 3200;FSB 393
Conroe Core Duo 2 E6400 @2.36
Maxtor 250 gig IDE 133 on a single IDE cable
Maxtor 100 gig shared on IDE cable with Plextor PX-712A DVD
Sound Blaster Augidy 2 value
Thermaltake Purepower 420W Max

What a pain... I'm not ready to let go of my AGP card. I sure hope a bios patch can fix this!!

 

[lepump]

My hdd(s?) becomes really slow and noisy after runnning prime(->reboot) otherwise stable at 295 fsb with ddr400. What's wrong with this mofo mobo??? Snakes?

 

[Ravenise]

Hmm... I wonder if installing a different HAL will make a difference? http://tinyurl.com/qb2oc