A7N8X DLX keeps randomly rebooting!

D

Digerati

Guest
I got an Asus A7N8X Deluxe rev 2.0 bios 1005 mobo a few weeks ago and can't seem to get the system to behave.

I have an AthlonXP 2500+ Barton installed and bought 2 sticks of generic 256mb pc2700 ram with Spectek chips.

After I installed all the components and began using the system I noticed that my computer would randomly reboot every once in awhile. Somedays it would only reboot once, other days maybe 4 times. I assumed that the generic ram was the problem since I had read that the A7N8X was picky about RAM. I ended up RMA'ing my 2 sticks of generic and got 2 sticks of Crucial pc2700 ram that according to Crucial were supposed to work fine with my board.

I just installed the 2 new Crucial sticks and my system is actually worse off than it was before. Now I'm lucky to make it 10 min. before my system randomly reboots. I've even rebooted before XP Pro has had a chance to finish booting up!

I'm not quite sure what to do now. Is my board just being picky about memory? am i just unlucky and got 2 batches of bad ram? or is my board actually the problem?

My old 8rda+ board never had any trouble with generic pc2700 ram with spectek chips. the A7N8X dlx doesn't seem to like anything.

I don't want to overclock and don't want to spend alot of money on pricey highend RAM. I just want something that will run stable and at expected performance speed.

Anyone have any idea what the problem is or what I should do?

I've adjusted all the bios settings from optimal to aggressive and it doesn't seem to make a lick of difference.

The startup voice usually will tell me that the system failed the memory test, but whether she does or not, my system reboots in under 10min.

At the rate this is going I'm thinking of just RMA'ing the board too and getting another Epox board or maybe an Abit or AOpen one.

Someone please help me!

Thanks

btw here are some error codes I was able to save before my system rebooted yet again:

BCCode : 1000008e BCP1 : C0000005 BCP2 : 80554665 BCP3 : EBC2AC78
BCP4 : 00000000 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 1_0 Product : 256_1

BCCode : c5 BCP1 : 00004000 BCP2 : 00000002 BCP3 : 00000001
BCP4 : 805348D8 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 1_0 Product : 256_1

from 2 different reboots.


--------------------------------------
AthlonXP 2500+ Barton, Asus A7N8X DLX rev 2.0 bios 1005, 2x256 Crucial pc2700, Vantec Aeroflow, ATI Radeon 9500 Pro, WD SE 80gb, Liton 24x cdrw, Toshiba 4x dvdrom, ATI tvwonderVE pci, Antec Sonata w/ 380w Truepower psu
 
about ur board

hey i think it has somethin to do with asus and is ur chipset on ur asus made by ALI because if it is that means ur board is ****ed pardon the language as i had an asus board 12months ago and it would do that, got boards swapped and went for a totally different asus board with the same troubles and when we stayed clear from asus everything was fine after that and u couldnt even install windows of any version so if i were u id stay clear from asus nething as i find and some of my mates find we have trouble with nething asus
 
Dilemma

Ivs got the same mobo and chip and the problem was exaxtly the same.
Quick question did you use the fan and heatsink that came with it or your old one.
I used my old one and it kept knocking off,popped the new one on made sure it was seated correctly and havnt had a problem since.

Hope this helps.

Cheers:D
 
what do you mean my fan and heat sink that came with it?

I am currently using my Vantec Aeroflow heatsink with the TMD fan. It does a really good job of keeping my temps low. The bios reads the cpu temp at around 34C at load.

I didn't use the heatsink and fan that came with my Barton 2500+ CPU if that is what you are talking about.

I used some Arctic Silver III too, which helps keep temps down.

So i'm not sure what my problem could be.
 
Re: about ur board

1, ignore this guys opinion, he wants help moron,
Originally posted by Daniel Rossi
hey i think it has somethin to do with asus and is ur chipset on ur asus made by ALI because if it is that means ur board is ****ed pardon the language as i had an asus board 12months ago and it would do that, got boards swapped and went for a totally different asus board with the same troubles and when we stayed clear from asus everything was fine after that and u couldnt even install windows of any version so if i were u id stay clear from asus nething as i find and some of my mates find we have trouble with nething asus


u need to disable automatic reboot from system poperties / advanced / startup and recovery.

then post again with the blue screen of death error code and someone will be able to help.
 
can u get urself to safe mode??
see if in safe mode it reboot or not...
and btw did u clean install ur xp after upgrading ur mobo??
and how bout the driver??
 
yeah, trying safe mode is a good idea. if it's fine in safe mode, it's probably a software/driver issue of some sort.

if you still have problems, try underclocking your ram. if the rebooting goes away, then it's a compatibility issue with your ram and mobo. or maybe borrow some memory from a friend for an hour and try it?
 
Well, I'm pretty sure it's a memory issue.

I did a clean install of XP Pro SP1 when I installed all the hardware originally and use all the latest nforce2, ati, etc. drivers.

The problem existed when I was using my generic spectek pc2700 Ram, but got immediately worse when I installed the Crucial pc2700 Ram.

My system checks in at expected speeds when I run the CPU arithmetic benchmark in SisSoftSandra, but when I try to run the Cache&Memory benchmark or the Memory Bandwidth benchmark, the system immediately reboots everytime.
 
haven't tried just 1 stick yet.

just ran memtest86 and after 1 test pass i already have 54,000 errors.

I guess this means i gotta replace the RAM again.

Guess I'll get the Kingston pc3200 ram that Asus recommends for the board. Hopefully that will solve the problem, otherwise I'm just gonna have to get a new less picky nforce2 mobo like my old 8rda+.
 
You've got a good power supply so that shoots down my first guess.

If you don't get any help from disabling autorestart and looking for error messages try pulling out everything that isn't essential (modem, lan, sound card, DVD, extra RAM) and see if its stable then. If it is start, loading stuff back in one at a time to see what causes the instability.

I had a sound card and vid card that got flaky with age and caused profressively more crashes with no error messages.

Before you replace the RAM again try slowing it down. Run the RAM at CL2.5 or 266 mHz and see if you get stability back. The Crucial should have been good stuff. Though the last stick of Crucial I bought wasn't as over clockable as the stick I bought last year.
 
Thanks for the advice.

I haven't disabled the autorestart yet but I'll post the error messages as soon as I do.

All the components in my system are relatively new and worked fine with only occassional restarts before I got the Crucial. The fact that the problem go so significantly worse as soon as I installed the Crucial combined with the many many errors I'm getting in memtest86 make me think it is the ram.

My ram timings in the bios are just set to the "optimal" setting: 7-2-2 2.5 and my FSB at 166.
 
mayb u can try an lower the mem timings and see.... 7-3-3
or try with 1 stick ;)
 
happened to me as well even with Kingston RAM.. it's the Nforce2 chipset and the RAM not properly designed to work with the new stepping (straight from Kingston tech support).. don't feel bad, even Corsair users are having the same problem...

I have tossed the board and will try a KT400a chipset instead.. will let you know how it goes...
 
Well obviously you have a bad stick of ram... just get a new one... seriously
 

Members online

No members online now.

Latest profile posts

Also Hi EP and people. I found this place again while looking through a oooollllllldddd backup. I have filled over 10TB and was looking at my collection of antiques. Any bids on the 500Mhz Win 95 fix?
Any of the SP crew still out there?
Xie wrote on Electronic Punk's profile.
Impressed you have kept this alive this long EP! So many sites have come and gone. :(

Just did some crude math and I apparently joined almost 18yrs ago, how is that possible???
hello peeps... is been some time since i last came here.
Electronic Punk wrote on Sazar's profile.
Rest in peace my friend, been trying to find you and finally did in the worst way imaginable.

Forum statistics

Threads
62,015
Messages
673,494
Members
5,621
Latest member
naeemsafi
Back