MSI 845Ultra problem, pls help!

[sbp123]

Hullo everyone,

Can anyone help me about this...I just bought:

p4 1.8a Northwood
256 TwinMOS 2100 CL2.5
MSI 845Ultra-ARU

Everything went fine (installation etc), just there's one thing that annoys the hell outta me - I dont know why, but when I reset the machine (whichever way), instead of rebooting, monitor goes into suspend mode (turns off) and machine doesn't react to anything any more - I have to turn it off, and then turn it on again...

Any ideas whats this? (Tried to consult the handbook, but didnt find much)

Thx in advance..

sbp

 

[o1die]

I had a similar problem (blank screen or random reboots) until I turned down the memory timings. I run at case 2.5 and 2T (when using 2 or more sticks of ddram) and the problems went away.

 

[sbp123]

Doesnt do any random reboots, or acts abnormally in any way, xcept when I intentionally reset with ctrl+alt+del or reset switch (Or restart from win), instead of rebooting, when it shuts down and should reboot/restart, it simply 'hangs' (Or goes into suspend mode)...Power led on the case is still turned on, but no signal from vidcard, keyboard doesnt work, reset switch doesnt work...

My memory:

TwinMOS DDR 2100 Unbuffered CL2.5, running it at 2.5-3-3-7

 

[Pauli]

Check the connector from the reset switch to the motherboard - you may have it, or one of the power switch connectors on the wrong MB pins. The documentation on these settings is always sketchy and I never get them right the first time I connect them.

 

[Duvie]

are you ocing any??? I had this board and would have similar problems once I got above 120fsb and had to boost the vcore...It was usually attributed to the board not delivering the vcore set in bios at time of startup...asus boards have a voltage booster that is jumper set to fix this...

 

[sbp123]

Well, here are the results of yesterday's testings with this strange occurance

I suppose after reading the Duvie's reply, actually that is what might been happening.

1) Everything is connected as it should be (reset switch works normally etc...)
2) There's less voltage on VCore than is set in BIOS

I was playin around yesterday, and got it running stable at 125 FSB (didnt try any higher, will do that today... ), so after running few tests (Prime95, 3dMark etc) to see if it will crash, I continued to install some sh*t, and it started rebooting normally...

I left Prime95 over night, and tried to reset this morning before going to work, and it rebooted normally - will see what happens when I get home in the afternoon..

VCore is constalntly 0.050 lower than set in BIOS - when I was writing the initial post, VCore was set to 1.500, and the actual VCore was 1.450 - maybe that was the problem - VCore at the moment is set to 1.650 and I'm getting 1.600 ...

WIll see today evening (and will experiment some more)

Thank you for da help!

 

[Possum]

I had the exact same experience when setting up my friend's overclocked P4 1.6A on the MSI 845 Ultra-ARU. Sometimes when I reboot using the Windows XP shutdown menu, it reboots fine, sometimes you'd have to completely shut of the computer's power supply (via switch on power supply or unplugging) to boot up again.

 

[sbp123]

Possum, any solution for that?

That is exactly what is happening to me (Possum's post), tho that was happening on the non oced settings as well...

Yesterday, while I was running on 125 FSB, there werent any probs resetting/rebooting the machine. I was installing sh*tload of stuff, and it was rebooting like a charm. (I had probelms rebooting at that FSB the previous day). Then I raised FSB to 133, and rebooting problem re-appeared (random as you say), tho memory is PC2100, running on 'conservative' 2.5-3-3-7.

It seems that, for some reason, mobo cant initialize memory on restart. MSI comes with that little D-Bracket (4 LEDs which indicate problems while booting), and the story bascially goes like this:

1) 1st boot after power was switched off - The D-Bracket is showing Memory Initialization problem, tho machine boots, and everything works perfectly (Prime95, 3dMark, PCMark, tried playing some games like Wolfenstein, and installing some big apps).

2a) If I select 'turn off completely' from Windows, after I turn on the machine again, D-Bracket is showing 'all green', or no errors - I will be able to reboot/restart w/o problems in most cases after that...

2b) If I select 'restart', at the point when it has to reboot, the machine 'hangs', the D-Bracket is showing that mobo is trying to Initialize memory w/o succes. The first step (mobo initialization) goes green, then the second step, memory init goes red, so the board tries to do it again (mobo init, mem init, go back, mobo init, mem init, go back...). On a few occassions, after certain ammount of time, it would boot, but there's no patter in it (I actually find out that it might boot after some time coz I was smoking on the balcony while it was doing the loop explained above, and it booted after 2-3 mins). If it 'hangs' you have to turn the machine off completely with the power switch on the back of the case, and then the process starts again like described in 1)

Now, if this is a memory issue, why everything would work, like apps, games, benchmarks and tests??? I tried every benchmark I could think of just to see if memory will create any errors - no avail - everything works like a charm...

At the moment I cannot get another DDR stick to try and swap 'em to see if it really is memory.

Besides this being annoying(VERY annoying at times), I dont know if there are any other 'drawbacks' with this behaviour...

SBP

 

[sbp123]

Problem fixed...I just moved the Dimm from dimm slot 1 to dimm slot 2, and everything works like a charm...

Donno whats the prob still, but...

I hope this will help sumbody

sbp