EPoX "EP-9NPA+Ultra" NVIDIA nForce4 ULTRA Chipset Motherboard

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: teddyv
Can anyone explain why Windows would insist on using a 1394 driver to connect to the Internet and not the NIC? Been at this for the last three hours and am about to just start all over again tomorrow morning. The build was easy, from the drivers on it was a nightmare.

Which driver version are you using?

techfuzz

 

[teddyv]

I installed the latest nVidia drivers from the nVidia site, then added the Realtek Audio and Lan drivers from the Epox disk. Everything went fine - assembly, WinXP Home, Mobo Drivers, ATi Drivers, until I tried to hook up to the Internet. I plugged in my Cable Modem (green light at connection) and got nothing. I went under Device Manager and all I had for Network Adapters was a Microsoft 1394 Adapter. I thought this was odd since I hadn't even hooked up my Firewire ports yet so I uninstalled it and opened the find new hardware. After a bit of hunting I found the RealTek Lan drivers and clicked on them. They appeared under the Network Adapters slot with a big yellow bang, saying "Error 10 Unable to Connect".

I have no idea where to go from here, when I rebooted the 1394 microsoft adapter was back, I still get no love from the Nic, and I have no idea what error #10 is. When I try to add a new Internet connection MS just tells me it is already done and that damn 1394 re-appears.

Did I forget to enable something in the Bios? Is my Mobo/Nic hosed and I need to RMA?

 

[phanna]

Originally posted by: teddyv

Did I forget to enable something in the Bios?

I don't think there is anything that you needed to specifically enable in the BIOS, unless you disabled something that you shouldn't have. Check in the onboard peripherals in the BIOS and make sure everything looks alright. I don't even use my onboard NIC, but it installed fine off the provided disc. Aside from that, I don't know what else to tell ya, NIC installs are usually pretty problem-free in my experience.

Originally posted by: teddyv

Is my Mobo/Nic hosed and I need to RMA?

Honestly, if it were just my NIC that wasn't working properly, I personally would probably just dust off an old PCI NIC rather than going through a somewhat troublesome RMA process.

 

[DBL]

Originally posted by: teddyv
I installed the latest nVidia drivers from the nVidia site, then added the Realtek Audio and Lan drivers from the Epox disk. Everything went fine - assembly, WinXP Home, Mobo Drivers, ATi Drivers, until I tried to hook up to the Internet. I plugged in my Cable Modem (green light at connection) and got nothing. I went under Device Manager and all I had for Network Adapters was a Microsoft 1394 Adapter. I thought this was odd since I hadn't even hooked up my Firewire ports yet so I uninstalled it and opened the find new hardware. After a bit of hunting I found the RealTek Lan drivers and clicked on them. They appeared under the Network Adapters slot with a big yellow bang, saying "Error 10 Unable to Connect".

I have no idea where to go from here, when I rebooted the 1394 microsoft adapter was back, I still get no love from the Nic, and I have no idea what error #10 is. When I try to add a new Internet connection MS just tells me it is already done and that damn 1394 re-appears.

Did I forget to enable something in the Bios? Is my Mobo/Nic hosed and I need to RMA?

I'm not sure exactly what you problem is but I can offer you some information which might help. I just set up this MB (9NPA+ SLI actually) and I am positive I also only saw the firewire network driver until I installed the correct NIC drivers. I would remove any instance of NIC drivers which are not functioning correctly and reboot and re-install the drivers. The Epox disk should install the NIC drivers for you. I don't believe you should have to use the "Find Hardware". Those Lan drivers you installed are possibly the wrong drivers, which explains them not working. After installing off the Epox disk, you should see them appear in your network connections.

Also, how did you install the nVidia drivers w/ no Internet connection? Did you already download them? Maybe you should install the LAN drivers before anything else?

Good luck

 

[teddyv]

Thanks for the reply - the presence of that 1394 driver really caught me off goard, I've never seen that before. I did download onto disk the latest nVidia nForce set and originally installed from disk.

The more I think about this the more I think I should probably carve a 15-gig partition off the 200-gig drive to use for the OS in case I hose it down the road. I think what I'll do is start fresh with a new format, OS install, install chipset from the Epox disk, Ati drivers I downloaded from the website, and see if that does it.

If not, it's RMA time - lucky I still have my old and slow Dell plugging away at an average rate of 5 BSODs a day.

 

[teddyv]

OK - turned out to be a damn bios setting all along. Needed to enable nVidia Lan.

 

[aLeoN]

Would a SI-120 in a P180 case fit with this board? (ie RAM, Capacitors, + maybe power cord)

 

[SPQQKY]

You should have no problems at all with the SI-120, though I have heard the power cord may get close if you have a cheaper PSU with a short main power cord.

 

[daedalus411]

Hello Everybody.

I've built two machines on this MB in the past month. Both with:

X2-3800 -stock speed and voltage (temps sit in the high 30's with a zalman 7000)
Powercolor X700 video
Seasonic 380W ps
Antec P180 case
BenQ 1640 DVD

One of them used 2-WD SE16 250GB drives in raid-1 and 4-512 sticks of Corsair value ram

the other has 2-Maxtor Maxline III 300GB drives and 4-512 OCZ gold RAM that has worked flawlessly in the o/c'ed P4 I took it out off

XP Pro on both, installed the raid drivers from a floppy made from the cd during installation, then the rest once everything was up and running.

Both of them are having stability problems. Not terrible, but they HARD lock up (no mouse moving, nothing but a restart will do) every few days. I've tried every bios from the first that supports the X2, and the nforce drivers from the cd and from the nvidia site, with no change that I can see.
My friend built two more machines based on the same parts, and he's having similar problems.

I've been reading up on all the forums I can find, but haven't found anything similar. Anybody got any ideas? Am I missing something really obvious that's specific to this board? I'm not a newbie on system building.. it's just that this machine doesn't quite sit right.

Thanks

 

[sixth]

Hmmmmmmm

I just had some issues with my system for the first time a few days ago found that it was locking due to a bad hard drive, that was in a ext USB case, turned it off and nothing ever happened so i knew it was related to that. Slapped in a new drive, and never had a problem againg...i would check your hard drives, so a scan, update bios, check drivers if needed do a fresh XP install maybe?

 

[daedalus411]

I'd say that was a good plan, but I've tried reinstalls a number of times.. and this is on multiple similar but not identical machines.

I remember reading something about the nvidia IDE driver being a nightmare.. is that still the case? or the RAID driver maybe?

 

[sgtdic]

i know that all of the nvidia drivers up til the 6.66 version have been crap, except for the chipset. i had numerous problems with the nvidia drivers. i would try using all windows drivers, except for the chipset one and see how that works for you. ie, no nvidia firewall, LAN, IDE, etc. i haven't had a problem since i uninstalled those. the drivers WILL make or break your machine. good luck

 

[SPQQKY]

Originally posted by: daedalus411
Hello Everybody.

I've built two machines on this MB in the past month. Both with:

X2-3800 -stock speed and voltage (temps sit in the high 30's with a zalman 7000)
Powercolor X700 video
Seasonic 380W ps
Antec P180 case
BenQ 1640 DVD

One of them used 2-WD SE16 250GB drives in raid-1 and 4-512 sticks of Corsair value ram

the other has 2-Maxtor Maxline III 300GB drives and 4-512 OCZ gold RAM that has worked flawlessly in the o/c'ed P4 I took it out off

XP Pro on both, installed the raid drivers from a floppy made from the cd during installation, then the rest once everything was up and running.

Both of them are having stability problems. Not terrible, but they HARD lock up (no mouse moving, nothing but a restart will do) every few days. I've tried every bios from the first that supports the X2, and the nforce drivers from the cd and from the nvidia site, with no change that I can see.
My friend built two more machines based on the same parts, and he's having similar problems.

I've been reading up on all the forums I can find, but haven't found anything similar. Anybody got any ideas? Am I missing something really obvious that's specific to this board? I'm not a newbie on system building.. it's just that this machine doesn't quite sit right.

Thanks

It is very difficult to get 4 sticks of memory stable on nF4 based motherboards. Be sure you have 2T enabled and maybe loosen the RAM timings and increase vdimm a bit.

 

[phanna]

Daedalus411:

I'm not sure what the PSU requirements woudl be for that rig, but it sounds like you have a decent amount of stuff in there. I was experiencing similar problems (although mine would usually happen within a day), and it turned out my power supply was the culprit. I was using an Antec 420W Truepower 2.0 PSU. These systems can be very power hungry, apparently. It sounded silly when someone recommended upgrading my 420W PSU, but it was well worth it. My system is now perfectly stable. At the very worst, you could pick one up from Best Buy (I snagged a 480W Antec Neopower), and if it doesn't solve your problem, you can always return it for a full refund.

 

[Azkarr]

Has anyone ever had a problem with this board with artifacting when overclocking a PCI-E VGA card? I have a MSI 6600 GT, and the slightest OC will bring artifacts. I already confirmed that temperature is not a problem. Also, this is the 3rd card of the same model I got from RMAs; I returned the other two because they artifacted under OC as well, and I thought they were defective. I already asked for help on the MSI forums, and they suggested that I take a look at the settings in my motherboard BIOS. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance.

PS: My PSU may be causing the problem, though I do not have another to confirm it. IT's a Thermaltake SilentPurepower 480W, and it has only 18A on the 12v line. Under load, the volt meter reads at 11.81 at the lowest when running a CS:S stress test. I know that this PSU is probably not very good for PCs using the 12v a lot.

 

[sixth]

I haave a X800 overclocked 30mhz and 50mhz on the memory with no artifacting....

 

[daedalus411]

I'm going to try forcing it to 2T and 166MHz and bump up the ram voltage a notch and see if that helps.

phanna- I had my last box which was a 2.6GHz P4-northwood at 3.2 and optical and 2 hard drives including one raptor, and a bunch of other stuff running on a 300W Seasonic, so I don't think it's the PS, but I'll keep an eye on it. These seasonics are really efficient and quiet.. that's why I use em

If anyones' got any other ideas, I appreciate them all

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: Azkarr
Has anyone ever had a problem with this board with artifacting when overclocking a PCI-E VGA card?

I have an X800GTO2 overclocked 135mhz core and 105mhz memory with no artifacts

 

[DrewCU]

I am surprised more people haven't reported this problem with frequent freezings but I definitely have this problem and so does at least one other person on these forums.

Sounds like what I have which is a problem with USB 2.0 and devices like Wireless USB adaptors, where the system locksup completely and you have to reset it manually. When the adaptor is unplugged, the system is fine, so as someone else mentioned, the solution is to set your USB settings to 1.1 in the BIOS and problem temporarily solved, or buy a USB 2.0 PCI card.

Either that or it is a problem with Seasonic PSU's as I have one also (500W), but I am guessing it is BIOS related to the Epox 9npa Ultra... Epox's support is awful, but if enough people report this problem then maybe something will get done!

Anyone else have similar problems?

 

[fanfan]

I have slight problem with 9NPA+Ultra, when I switch-on and switch-off my PC, there is one beep, but system boot rocently and WinXp works fine and the whole system is stable. There is a lot codes changing on MB, but it is probably FF. Is it possible to unplug beeping or how can I find the problem? Might it be, that I have no floppy disk?
Fanfan

 

[servo101]

Hi guys, new member here. Just got my X2 3800+ and EPoX 9NPA+ Ultra. Was using a 3000+ Venice OCed to 2.7 GHz on an MSI K8N Diamond prior to this set-up. Anyways, I have OCed my X2 3800+ to 2.3 Ghz, had to give it 1.5vcore but the heat isnt all that disconcerting so im pretty good. my only problem is that CPU-Z reports Core#0 as getting 1.5vcore (correct) while Core#1 gets only 1.35vcore (duh!). Im using the latest BIOS for the mobo as found on the Epox Taiwan site so Im kinda unsure why the readout is like that...

here's a link the image...

 

[daedalus411]

Slowing my USB down to 1.1 on a modern motherboard seems like a really crazy thing to have to do.. I know that I for one use a number of USB2 peripherals from time to time.. If it's a driver thing, Nvidia really need to get on that.

Anyone else?

 

[sgtdic]

i also have a usb problem, but i might have mentioned it before. my psp, when plugged up to the front ports, says it is not recognized by windows. but when i plug it up in the back it is fine. some things work on my front ports and only sometimes my psp will work, but the contents will disappear after a minute or so. it is so weird. i know it is hooked up correctly, because the wires match the layout of the usb adapter that came with the mobo. the psp works on that adapter.

 

[servo101]

when you mean front, do you mean the USB ports on the case? you could double check to make sure that the front USB I/O wires are properly plugged in. might have come loose or something. so far, i havent had any issues using the USB headers on the front

 

[gfngfgf]

Originally posted by: fanfan
I have slight problem with 9NPA+Ultra, when I switch-on and switch-off my PC, there is one beep, but system boot rocently and WinXp works fine and the whole system is stable. There is a lot codes changing on MB, but it is probably FF. Is it possible to unplug beeping or how can I find the problem? Might it be, that I have no floppy disk?
Fanfan

I think that's just an "all OK" beep. Not sure if there's a BIOS option to disable the beep, but yeah, I get that too, when I boot up. I think it's by design...not any error.