Issues with XP/2000 and Abit TH7 Raid Motherboard

[Schoon]

Hi, i've pretty much exhausted all that I can come up with to fix this problem so I decided to post here and see if anyone can help me to figure this out. I recently put together a machine that has the following installed...

Abit TH7-Raid Motherboard with Intel Pentium 4 1.5 ghz processor running at default voltage and speed
512 Meg of Rambus ram
2 IBM 60 gig deskstars and 2 IBM 40 gig deskstars in two RAID 0 stripe arrays (one 60 on each master and one 40 on each slave)
2 CD Roms drives on the master of each of the normal IDE channels
GEForce 2 Pro 64 meg
10/100 Network Card
Sound Blaster Live Value

Now, I have installed windows 2k professionial successfully and it seems to run pretty well, the problem came in when I received Return to Castle Wolfenstein (RTCW) and tried playing it, the game installed fine and I can play it but after a few moments into the game it will lock up at random times. Here are the things that I have tried...

1. Installed latest graphics drivers from nvidia
2. Installed Directx 8.1
3. Installed latest sound drivers from creative labs
4. Installed ALL critical updates and service packs for windows 2k via windows update

It gets stranger....I then tried installing Quake 3 Arena and it does exactly the same thing, runs in to the menu, set up, into the game, lock up anywhere from 2 seconds to a minute into playing the game.

Next I decided to see if it was windows so I went to install XP. The first thing that happened with an upgrade to XP is that it hosed my system. The boot record was screwed up so I had to delete the array and then do a fresh install, the problem was that Windows XP will NOT recognize the array drives, it jsut says the drives are damaged when it tried to format NTFS and will not continue. So I reverted back to windows 2k went through all the above steps and it still does the same thing.

Things that I have not tried but am having a hard time justifying because it just doesn't seem necessary and I have nothing to support that it will fix teh problem.

1. Flashing to the latest motherboard bios
2. Putting a hard drive on the regular ide ports and installing windows xp to this and ultimately quake 3 or rtcw to see if they work
3. A different video card (maybe it's something wrong with teh geforce?)
4. Newer highpoint raid drivers (what i've read on abit's site is that windows xp has native support)

If you've read this far you can see that i've done quite a bit of work trying to get this figured out. As usual, the tech support departments at Microsoft, Activision and ABIT have been no help what soever and I cant' seem to find anyone else having a similar problem on any of my regularly visited forums. I hope someone reading this can help me out. Thanks for everyone's time!

 

[Cuular]

For a quick test, pull out the sound card and see what happens.

 

[Togg]

Hi!

I have following configuration:

Abit TH7-II
Intel PIV 1700MHz
2x128 MB Kingston PC800 RIMM
SB Live 1024 Player
Asus V8200 Deluxe Geforce3 AGP4x Card
Realtek 8139PCI

Opengl and DirectX randomly crashing also for me , under WinME, Win2k and WinXP !!!
i tried different configurations, with ACPI or without ACPI !
I didn't overclocked my system yet, so nothing should be burned...

I also tested without any pci card inserted and disabled onboard devices, but still crashing.
i also tried different detonators, it seems detonator 22.50 is running longest times without crashing (30 minutes in 3dmark2001, 60 minutes in half-life)
oh i forgot, temperature is low at 30°C

i also updatet bios to build 38

 

[Tal]

What Wattage on the Power Supply? Just curious. P4 approved?
I ask cause my friend was using an AMD XP 1700 + and his box worked fine till he upgraded to that new processor. We finally.... found out that he had a smaller power supply, and when it was idle or just doing pretty much small stuff in WinXP, it was fine.... Boot up a game and have the Graphics card and processor start to really draw that power and it would lock up. Always made a wierd buzzing sound in the speakers too... Hope that helps, -TAL

 

[Schoon]

I don't believe that the power supply is the problem, I bought the case/power supply at time of upgrade, it's a 400 watt power supply. I also tried the above suggestion of removing the sound card but it still does the same thing. I tried running 3d Mark on it and it ran successfully for over 2 hours before I cancelled out of it. It's getting stranger and stranger.

Thanks so far for all the suggestions!!

 

[911paramedic]

This may sound strange, but I saw on one of the game sites that RTCW does not work with XP. Have you uninstalled it and tried your system out yet? You may also have to clean out your registry to remove any old RTCW entries.

I too have XP and have had problems with games locking up my system. I also went to my admin tools and noticed that JVM (java virtual machine) was running and using up 95% of my CPU! That was after a clean boot, I chose to end that process, rebooted, and it has been running fine ever since. And yes the JVM runs when needed but doesn't eat all my resources anymore. I really don't know what caused that but after uninstalling the game program and shutting down the JVM once, I was back in business.

 

[Schoon]

Well, I have FINALLY figured out what the problem is with this system. I removed the GeForce 2 Pro (PNY Vertex Card) and installed an older Hercules GeForce DDR card and all my problems went away. I played wolfenstein for over an hour and then installed and ran medal of honor without any issues. Now, my question's are these...


1. Do you think something is wrong with the GeForce 2 Pro because it did not work or could it be a problem with it and the motherboard?
2. Do you think the issues with XP will go away now that i'm using a different video card or are they still related to the RAID array?
3. Does anyone have any experience dealing with PNY and returning things, their tech support dept won't call back.

Thanks for the help

Bill

 

[Schoon]

Last night, I installed the geforce 2 pro that I took out of the th7 mobo system and placed it into a bx6 revision 2 mobo system. It works fine there. So now i'm asking myself, why the hell can't I use the geforce 2 in my latest and greatest system??? I want the speed that the geforce 2 provides but it will not run correctly in the th7 mobo. What else can I try here? Please help!