DFI NFII Ultra Infinity PCI problems

The only change I made the the bios was to change the cpu from 133 to 166. The modem problem existed from first installation, with the defaults. The computer just can't seem to see any modem. I can install or delete software, but the PCI slots don't seem to be read, even when I tried a non-modem PCI card.

 

Oh, OK Barry. Sounded like he may have been climbing in under the hood .

Maybe some more info:
http://arstechnica.com/guide/building/bios/bios-1.html

 

Thanks for the suggestions Matt, but most of the information was old and didn't address the newer items on the BIOS for this board. There was also a discrepancy where one said to enable Video RAM Cacheable, while the other said to disable it. Hopefully there is someone out there who has this mobo who can share his or her experience. I know I could find someone on the overclocking forums, but all they ever say is that it is a waste to have this mobo and not overclock it, not willing to help anyone who doesn't overclock.

 

Huh? This is probably the most definitive site available anywhere and I guarantee you its way beyond your MoBo. And, I mean way beyond.



edit re: Adrian's Rojakpot

 

Barry:
To the extent that I am able, I share some of your frustration here. Although speculative, it sounds to me like your son has put a lot of stuff on his "new machine" and now you are charged with the task of making it work. Regardless of the sequence of events or actual facts, we know things aren't working right or lets say aren't working. Yes, it could be the MoBo, but I personally don't think so. Having said that RMA it if you want to. If you miss the NewEgg 30 day return, DFI gives you a full year.

Based upon what you've said and described. if this was my machine I'd disable the 98se drive, delete the partition on the 80 gig WD, reformat it, clear CMOS, and then, do a clean XP install. I wouldn't let Jr and his software anywhere near this machine until everything was working and I'd do some reading on aureate and wild tangent for starters.

I did some reading on this MoBo earlier and found the section on the DMICNFG.EXE of particular interest relative to your problem. However, I think it is more advisable to wipe, clear and re-install before you try RMA'ing this MoBo. It can be done in less than an hour and my bet is you'd give almost anything for a 60 minute solution right about now.

My earlier posts may sound harsh and I'll apologize for my own frustration in trying to read between the lines to figure out whats really going on here.
Good Luck to you - I know you have to be approaching the boiling point.

 

I have finally figured out the discrepancy regarding the computer's reading of the modem. I just realized that by going into control panel>phone & modem options>modems>properties, the general page lists device status and says: This device is working properly.

If you are having problems with this device, click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter.
This is the message it gives whether there is a modem on the computer or not. That is where I originally came up with the computer saying that the modem is working properly. I believe that either it does no checks and is just an introduction to the troubleshooter, or it may check specific problems, and, if it doesn't see them says everything is working properly. Nothing on this computer has ever shown that the modem, or any other PCI card, is being seen or operates. This problem existed from the start, without the 98SE drive, and before my son put any of his games on it.
When I said that the info on the links was older than my computer, I meant that the last time those free sites were updated was 2001 and 2003. There are many items on my bios that weren't even listed on those sites. I'm not trying to give you a hard time, just to relay the facts as I see them. I'm not claiming that my vision is that perfect, but I have done nothing to intentionally mislead anyone.

 

No Barry, and not trying to imply you have. In re-reading everything, I think you have done an admirable job of trying to be as accurate as possible. You may well have a defective Mobo. When checking devices, it is usually adviseable to do so from System in the control panel.

In the interest of time and actual problem solving, my suggestion is still to wipe the drive, reset CMOS, set Bios to setup default and do a clean installation of XP. If you've got another HDD - you can disconnect the two you are using and try it with a virgin - that will answer once and for all whether its your MoBo or something else. Just trying to save you the time and effort of pulling your MoBo and RMA'ing it if its not the MoBo. Understand that NewEgg will take it back regardless, but DFI will test it and if its not bad, they'll send it right back to you.

 

I think mattman made a very important suggestion that went relatively unnoticed. You need your chipset drivers.

I believe your chipset drivers are called a "system driver" (NFII_2.45_XP2K.exe ) here:

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Support/Downl...D=2141&CATEGORY_TYPE=MB&STATUS_FLAG=A&SITE=NA

The most recent BIOS is here:

http://www.dfi.com.tw/Support/Downl...TYPE=MB&INDEX_TYPE=null&STATUS_FLAG=A&SITE=NA

PS. The BIOS setting for whether the system is plug-and-play or not refers to whether the mobo should assign resources to the ISA slot (or equivalent). It has no effect on the assignment of PCI slots or other hardware resources. Most new boards don't even have ISA slots, in which case the setting does absolutely nothing.

 

I believe that I already have the latest drivers. Actually, I don't believe that there have been any updates since the board came out. My drivers are:
\SystemDriver\nForce_2.45_winxp2k_WHQL_english.exe
I believe that this is the same as the NFII_2.45_XP2K.exe you suggested I download. My version # is 6.22.100.1441. I'm not sure how to check to see if I have the most current bios, but am reluctant changing the bios, unless the changes directly affect a problem I am having, due to past flash problems.
I'll call DFI tomorrow, as they don't respond to email. Unless I can get help from them, I am leaning toward getting the RMA.

 

Barry, the BIOS settings are very dependent on the "combination" of hardware in your system and what you want it to do. Note that the ARS Technica information talks of L2 cache. Your Athlon XP should have 512kb of L2 cache (which is reasonable, the new P4 chips have 1mb...more L2 cache more expensive though). Duron and Celeron chips had half or less of this amount (the main reason they were cheaper), so you would not want to tie up the L2 cache on those chips and reroute normal functions through system memory (the smaller the L2 cache the more the processor has to cache that information in system memory, which is slower). It is a little blurry, but I take it that you need a reasonable amount of L2 cache, then if you cache the video RAM, you reduce the amount of L2 cache available for other processing tasks, possibly spilling over into system memory and slowing your system (How fast is your system memory?...Another factor). If it does not spill over the system will work faster. You may just have to test it, thus... "BIOS setting changes should be made one at a time and the system tested thoroughly after each one. "

You will have to read the motherboard manual and compare it to the information in your hardware manuals (like your video card manual) and relate that to your system. For example, my video card is capable of "fast writes" so I could enable Fast Writes in my BIOS, BUT if I changed the card to one that is not cable of it there may be unexplained instablity, so I am only going to change it if I consider I need better video performance (say if I get a high-powered game), otherwise it can stay disabled.

The settings are generally if you have top of the range hardware that is capable of utilising the enhanced settings and you need peak performance. Changes will probably only bring minimal improvements anyway.

Hope this explains a few things.

Matt
Edit: sorry, the L2 cache for the Athlon will probably be 256kb.

 

It sounds like you do indeed have the most recent motherboard drivers. If you have not reinstalled them recently, or have made changes in other drivers, like video, it wouldn't hurt to reinstall them. I had a PCI card that was not detected. My chip drivers had been installed only 2 weeks before. Re-installing them made the PCI card appear. Worth a shot if you have the driver handy.

This may have no practical utility at all, but I have put together 3 programs that scan the PCI bus and report on status and/or devices identified. It would be interesting and possibly helpful to know if it is just XP that can't see what's there.

http://users.adelphia.net/~abraxas/dl/pci.rar

 

I downloaded your utility but have trouble opening it. Stuffit 8.0 says:
Unable to expand archive.
Engine Error: Format Error
What do I do now?

 

I realized that 2 of the programs did open, PCI.exe & CHKPCI.exe. PCI.exe states that it won't work on 2000, NT or XP, so I'd have to hook up the WIN98SE drive to see if it works. The CHKPCI.exe just flashed then did nothing. I'm not sure what I am supposed to do with it. I could find no logs to show anything was recorded.

 

Just got back on and wanted to clarify my post #12 mentioning resetting configuration data in PNP section of the BIOS versus Abraxas general comment about PNP. There is a big difference here.

Abraxas:

The ESCD (Extended System Configuration Data) is a feature of the Plug and Play BIOS that allows the BIOS to re-use system configuration data.

Whenever the BIOS boots up, it needs to configure the ISA, PCI and AGP devices in the system (Plug and Play-capable or otherwise). However, since the installed devices are unlikely to change from one booting to another, the system configuration data actually remains the same. Therefore, if it can be stored and re-used, the BIOS can skip configuring the same devices every time you boot up the system.

This is where the ESCD feature comes in. It stores the IRQ, DMA, I/O and memory configurations of your system's devices in a special area of the BIOS Flash ROM. The BIOS will snoop and re-use the stored configuration data when it boots up the system. As long as there are no hardware changes, the BIOS does not need to reconfigure the ESCD.

If you install a new piece of hardware or modify your computer's hardware configuration, the BIOS will automatically detect the changes and reconfigure the ESCD. Therefore, there is usually no need to manually force the BIOS to reconfigure the ESCD.

However, the occasion may arise where the BIOS may not be able to detect the hardware changes. A serious resource conflict may occur and the operating system may not even boot as a result. This is where the Reset Configuration Data BIOS feature comes in.

This BIOS feature allows you to manually force the BIOS to clear the previously saved ESCD data and reconfigure the settings. All you need to do is enable this BIOS feature and then reboot your computer. The new ESCD should resolve the conflict and allow the operating system to load normally.



edit: Used to run into this frequently with ABIT KT7 & KT7a boards relative to audio cards and IRQ's with 98se. Admittedly XP is a different beast and handles interupts much better, but I offered this suggestion earlier because of all the modem moving between PCI slots & the different modems attempted.

 

Thanks for the operational description of the new ECSD system of resource assignment, Rockster2U. But I am unsure what relevance that has to the setting for whether the operating system is Plug-and-Play.

In what would appear to be a confusion of types, you mentioned the Plug-and-Play BIOS. Modern BIOS do have remarkable Plug-and-Play detection of hardware devices. But this is something quite different from the Plug-and-Play operating system. The IRQ and DMA resources assigned by the BIOS are more for its own configurational purposes than an aid to the operating system.

You will find on almost any machine that there are devices with assigned IRQ's and DMA's in the BIOS that nevertheless have different assignments in the operating system. And with operating systems like XP which take a degree of software control over the BIOS, many BIOS settings are overridden by the operating system.

The BIOS allocates resources regardless of whether the operating system is Plug-and-Play. Operating systems that are not Plug-and-Play use the assignments of the BIOS since it can make none of its own. Plug-and-Play operating systems assign resources themselves, to some degree independent of the BIOS.

So, the BIOS and the operating systems seem to handle all the resource assignments. So, any setting in the BIOS about what type of operating system there was could only have a very minor effect on something since the BIOS and OS are so independent. That minor effect is to change the resources used by the ISA slot so that it corresponds to the IRQ and DMA settings on the ISA device itself (slide switches, sometimes, or jumpers).

 

Abraxas:
No arguement - think we posted almost simultaneous (my edit/your post).

 

I have two questions:

Isn't that onboard the athlon now, and used for reading the instruction queue ahead? It's been my understanding that caching video BIOS (ROM) is done to system RAM because of its increased speed as compared to ROM.

Next, what effect, if any, has BIOS shadowing (done also to system RAM) on Plug-n-Play? For example, if an IRQ arises from the hardware, is it easier for the OS to handle it with shadowing enabled? My guess is no, but...

 

After all this run around, I finally got a hold of DFI tech support. According to them, there are only three options that could cause this problem:
1) a conflict in device manager
2) the mobo is shorted to the case
3) the mobo is defective

Guess what? When I took the mobo out, it worked perfectly. Now I just need to figure out a way to get it back in my case without shorting anything. DFI says that the ***** by the PCI slots commonly shorts out and suggested fiber washers when I reinstall the mobo. At least the PCI slots are reading now. Thanks for all the suggestions.
Barry
I guess that Windows BBS automatically screens for foul language. It wouldn't let me say the name of the threaded fastener, so you just get *s. I'm sure you can figure out how the board is attached to the case.

 

Great news Barry -