Asus n7n8x deluxe system unstable

[mikeret57]

Greetings,

We have a home built computer with a Asus n7n8x deluxe motherboard with windoew XP and PNY PC2700 memory (512mb)and have been struggling with it for weeks....actually months. We had an ATI Radeon 9200 agp card and it caused several freezeups so we followed the instructions of the group and installed the newest drivers which seemed to help the problem but the computer still freezes up or occasionally randomly restarts. We since pulled out the AGP card and put in an nvidia pci video board from another computer in our house but still experience random restarts. Also have found that when we try to shut down windows, it does not shut down but goes into a series of restarts until it finally boots back up making the only way to shut down the system is to hold down the power button. Any suggestions on where to go next? Thanks for your help,

Mike

[Darthgary]

Sounds like something is unstable.

You can first check your CPU

1. Check the temp of your CPU - report back

2. Make sure the heatsink is on correct and the fan is on the heatsink right and is plugged in.

If you know someone with some DDR memory then borrow it and try it in your machine.Or it could even be a virus so make sure you have a good scanner like Norton or Mcafee.

[Xtreeme]

psu? Id go back to barebones setup and see if it persists. Then try to isolate it. Right now it could be anything.

[mikeret57]

Thanks for the ideas.

I checked the heat sink/fan/cpu temperature using the asis probe utility from the motherboard. The CPU temp seems to be ok and is stable through time. I have Mcafee that I need to try to do the scanning with. I will also look for another memory stick to try. Is the DDR 2700 OK for this system OK? The system speed that I am running is 2.08Ghz
Thanks, Mike

[peterwilkes]

I could not find any details on the n7n8x motherbaord but there is a A7N8X Motherboard which I have.

if you do have the A7N8X it is very picky on the tyre of ram that you use if you are going to use DDR400 / PC3200 RAM.

See the product specs on the asus website for certified RAM.

I got not certified ram and experienced simalar problems.

I am not sure wheter this affeacts nor DDR400 / PC3200 RAM.

[Strawbs]

You might want to try the other suggestions before you do this and back-up any important data.

Check the ACPI (APIC) mode is in operation in "Control Panel>System Properties>Hardware>Device Manager>System Devices", one of the first entries should read "ACPI Fixed Button Feature".

If it's not there ...the BIOS has an option to enable\disable APIC mode, I can't remember where exactly but I think it is in the Advanced section. This is sometimes the key to shutdown issues, set it to the opposite of where it's at already. I've read that this needs to be set before the installation of XP, so if you get no joy, you may need to re-install XP!

You should also double-check the switch wiring to the Mobo isn't ass about face (power = reset and vice-versa) ...because we're all capable of making the simplest mistakes.

The last thing I can think of would be a BIOS Update! The Original BIOS' were a little buggy, Not sure if you've tried that or not but, make sure you download the correct one for your revision of board (rev. marking is between PCI slots 2 & 3, next to Asus branding).

Let us know how you get on.

[d1sc g0lf3r]

I have an Asus a7n8x MoBo and I was having random reboots also. It was a memory problem which I was able to resolve by changing my memory timings they were set at 6-3-3-2.5 and I switched them to 7-3-3-2.5 and my reboots went away. I am running 1Gig (2x 512MB) of Crucial PC2700 and my memory frequency is set to 166MHz. See if you can find the memory timings for your specific memory at PNY's website or call their support line.