KT7A-Raid Freeze problem still occurring

[imonarock]

After over a month of trying just about everything suggested on this forum, I though I was in the clear. I rebuilt my Raid 0 stripe. I removed all pci cards from the system. Intsalled Win2k with only the AIW video card. Everything ran great. I upgraded to 4.26 minus the bus mastering driver. I added the pci cards one by one.

First the Realtek Ethernet PCI - rebooted and everything was stable
Next the dreaded Monster 400 Sound card - rebooted and even did a scandisk while flipping through channels as fast as I can using the AIW tuner. Everything was great.
Then the Maxtor firewire PCI card went in.. Still everything stable even with the torture test.

Next I updated my browser to 5.5 including the critical updates. Rebooted and things seemed ok. However I didnt torture test.
And finally since I was on a roll I added win2k Service Pack 1. Rebooted and I was back to my old problems.

The computer was freezing at random.

I uninstalled Service Pack 1, still the same results. UGH.

I guess I have to start all over now...

Any ideas. ASPI seemed to doing a fine job. Everything was on irq 7 with no problems. until SP1.

THanks,

 

[imonarock]

Biiizump

 

[grendelkhan]

Huhn...

I'm at a loss here. Ditching ACPI was the kicker for me, but obviously you've been down that road.

When trying to get it to work in ACPI mode, I went so far (I know this sounds anal) as to make up matricies with all my different cards and every possible slot configuration. NOTHING WORKED. The 3 PCI card limit was hit by me in a big way.

 

[imonarock]

one more bump for good measure.

 

[idgaf13]

I have read recommendations by MS and via
to not install the latest ide drivers when
flashing BIOS.
I had same problem I regressed to win98
no freezes do not know why ?

 

[DiseasedDonkey]

i have nothing to suggest, but i feel your pain brother. i got this board since it was released a few months ago and i have spent countless hours trying to stablize the dam thing.... and i still end up rebooting because of a freeze up at least once a day (win2000). very frustrating.

wish i could help, but the least i could do is push back to the top!

 

[imonarock]

Well I started over...

deleted raid partition.
Reinstalled win2k
applied 4.26 without bus master
upgraded usb driver
Tested....................everything fine
installed Realtek Ethernet pci
rebooted
Tested....................everything fine
installed Maxtor Firewire pci
rebooted
Tested....................everything fine
installed Turtle beach sound card (vortex) pci
rebooted
Booom Crash sputter freeeze... turtle beach and this board dont go together.
now I will go back to the mx400 sound pci and see what happens.


I have also tried rearranging the cards as the KT7 faq states, but they are going to share irq's no matter what.

The way I see it... at this point im adding one too many pci cards or its my damn sound board.
Damn $1300 paper weight.

 

[tracerbullet]

There appears to be a well documented problem that having anything plugged into IDE 4 causes the loss of ability to have 4 or more PCI devices. Wreaks havoc on USB too. You are not alone.

I troubleshooted mine for 2 weeks = "RMA". MSI on the way right now...

My roommate kept his (we got the same set up). He used just '98 (I used 98 SE), and had FEWER problems anyway. Just an option.

 

[imonarock]

Didnt have too much time to try things last night. but....

I did remove turtle beach sound card and replace with my diamond mx400. The computer ran for a few minutes and then the mouse froze (USB). Next I got a BSOD blue screen. Upon successive reboots I now always get a blue screen at startup. I tried enabling the memory hole in the bios, lowering voltage to 3.3... etc..

as of this moment, im attempting to put the sound card in slot 2 with 3 and 4 housing my ethernet card and 1394 firewire card.

 

[WarCon]

This is something I heard on another forum, but you can only have 4 PCI bus mastering devices in your system at any one time. Doesn't sound like you are breakin that rule but have seen countless posts about people using Raid and having crashes with the 3rd PCI cards + RAID controller(4th PCI device). I know the RAID controller is considered a PCI device, but I wonder if the plain IDE controller is also considered a PCI device. Something to write the mobo manufacturer and find out. Wish I knew more so I could help. Also I know that PCI slot 5 is the one the IDE controller shares and if the card you put there doesn't support sharing(ACPI) then its gonna burp. Same goes for operating system without ACPI, so check which slot your stuff was in when you installed service pack 2, maybe you had a board in that slot and caused a conflict with IDE controller. Just some stuff to throw in the mixer.