Problems with MSI Neo K8 Plat

[Valaire]

Alright, I just had to RMA a bad Raptor drive and finally installed Windows XP and now have another problem with this board. I bought Corsair XMS PC3200 CL2-3-3-6 T1 timing memory with my board and installed it. At Auto setting, it puts the board at CL3-3-8-3-2T, which is obviously too slow. After installing the new bios, and all my drivers, I went into the bios to fiddle with the memory timings. I set them all to what they should be, and it wouldn't boot.

I cleared the CMOS by moving the jumper down a peg like it said in the manual. Reboot with jumper back on right and it sits at the logo screen for a very long time, until it finally lets me into bios, i start making safer and safer memory timings but none of them will boot. Finally I leave it as it is, (i keep clearing the cmos each time) however now the damn thing won't boot into Windows.

It was not an overheating issue or anything, I tried swapping DIMMS and trying one 512 mb module instead of 2. What it does is it will detect memory and IDE and sata drives fine, but then will hang there and very very slowly (5-8 minutes later) go to the next screen where sometimes it will say update success to the dmi thing or whatever it's called. Other times it will give me the windows error screen and tell me how i want to boot windows. Either way I will never get to the windows xp boot screen because the computer will reboot before it can.

I was having no problems before this and my psu is fine, heat is fine, and the memory (was) ok beyond being a lot slower than it should have been.

Any clues as to what's wrong, how to further diagnose, or preferably how to fix?

 

[mechBgon]

Crank the memory voltage up to 2.7 volts if you didn't already. That ain't tame ol' PC2100 there

Also, if you happen to have a Western Digital IDE hard drive in the mix, and it is solo on its own IDE cable, jumper it for Single Drive (typically this means taking the jumper cap off the pins completely). And examine the jumpering of your new Raptor, since I heard someone remark that theirs came mis-jumpered and caused them a major witch-hunt before they figured it out. I'm not sure what the jumper settings are for on the Raptors, but evidently they can be incorrect despite it being SATA

Good luck, hope that helps

 

[Valaire]

Okay major update, still confused:

Was gonna re-flash the bios of the computer but after setting it back up, it booted fine, past the dmi stage. It was fast again and not hanging. I tried ita gain and it said NTLDR.DLL was missing or corrupt, I think. So I figured the windows xp install was defunct, which I was fine with. I still had no idea why after it being dormant for awhile it began to work again (definitely was not heat, case is open and with 4 fans).

I reinstalled Windows, and discovered that one of my hard drives is not being detected anymore! I am pretty sure it's dead because the BIOS will not detect it. This is a pretty bad setback for me. What I want to know, was changing the memory voltage and upping the timings able to somehow kill my hard drive, or did my hard drive dying cause this? Or is it unrelated. The timing is highly suspect. I have 2 idential maxtor drives of the same age, in addition to the raptor i just got. They worked fine and now one just dies?

And what should I do about the memory? I had changed the memory voltage from auto all the way up to 1.7 volts, and it would not boot for any of it. I didn't pay for XMS to have it at CL3!

Thanks,
Chad

 

[Valaire]

I have been using a good quality Enermax 350 watt PSU btw... I hope it was not possibly the cause of all this, because I've never had a problem with it.

 

[mechBgon]

What brand and model is the hard drive that isn't being detected by the BIOS? If it's a Western Digital, then refer to my tip about the Single Drive jumper setting if it is, in fact, a "single drive" (a drive that has an IDE cable to itself).

It's good to hear that you have a respectable brand of power supply. About the other issues, 2.7 volts would be entirely appropriate for the memory. You might want to reset your CMOS if you've tinkered with the memory timing details as much as it sounds like, and then just set the memory's overall bus speed to its proper setting and restore it to 2.7 volts.

 

[Valaire]

The drive that I think died is a Maxtor DiamondMax 2 MB Cache 80 GB, past warranty. :/ It was slaved to another identical drive. The master is fine, the slave is for all intense purposes gone. Only thing I can do is trty it in another computer.

As for the memory, I got it stable at 2.5-3-6-3-1T, at I think 2.7 volts. Since this whole mess startted from this (and may have destrtoyed my HDD), I haven't done anything further.

 

[Valaire]

About to switch the drive. I assume the concensus is that it is dead, would just like to figure out why.