mobo cause no display with AGP card?

Well, here I am again, pulling out the last of my hair. I was so proud of the new machine I built, I went out and bought it a new ViewSonic VG800-2 18" LCD monitor. Much to my suprise, when I opened the box, it did not have a DVI connector, just a regular 15 pin video connector.

My AGP ATI 7500 video card has only a DVI connection. So, I figured, what the heck, I'll just put in my old NVida AGP card since I wasn't using the TV feature of the ATI card anyhow. Go to device manager, delete ATI display adapter.

Pull ATI card, stick in NVida AGP card. I hook everything up, boot and get MOBO error 1 long, 2 short beeps. Video problems, no display. Had a similar problem on different machine with Shuttle board, had to fire it up with a PCI video card, load AGP drivers, switch back to AGP card, machine ran fine thereafter.

take out AGP card, stick in PCI card, connect monitor, boot, all OK, beautiful display. Load AGP drivers from ViewSonic CD, shut down machine, pull PCI card, insert AGP card, hook up monitor, boot, No Video, 1 long two short beeps.

Go back to PCI card, go to NVida, download Universal drivers, switch back AGP card, no video. Bad AGP card??? Put AGP card in different machine with CRT monitor, boot it, no problem.

Put PCI card back in machine boot up, try figure what software problem causing video problem. Machine starts locking up, shutting down, rebooting itself. Works OK, except try to download file, downloads few Megs, download quits, machine locks, machine reboots. Figure this is Windows XP problem. Try to fix, SFC, reload Windows. reinstall windows on formatted drive, problem persists.

MSFT says hard drive failure. Switch drives, new install of XP, problem persists. MSFT says power supply problem. Switch power supply, problem persists. MSFT says MOBO problem. Current status, machine will not boot.

Before I dissasemble machine and replace MOBO, anybody out there got a diagnostic suggestion??

Martin

 

Hi Martin, how's it going? Putting that "Worlds record of crashes" beyond doubt .

Some thoughts:

Your motherboard doesn't seem to like that nVidia card. You can get an DVI/VGA adapter for the ATI card: DVI/VGA

The connectors on the cards may be getting fouled up with the changing. Try cleaning them with Contact Cleaner and a soft cloth, even spray in the M/B slots, but make sure it has dried before powering it up. (A friend of mine INSISTS on holding cards by the connectors. When they don't work, he gives them to me. Clean...work again.)

Are there any settings in the CMOS for "VGA boot from... "? It could be under "Periferals ".

You say it won't boot. Windows boot? Can the machine boot from floppy or CD?

With all the work in there, cables/connections may have worked loose. I would try to get it going with just the basics. If you are going to take the M/B out, then try firing it up outside the case (on an antistatic bag or cardboard).

Anyway...sounds like you have as much fun trying to get these things to work as I do.......fun?..ha ha!

Luck
Matt

PS Divers: Removing drivers doesn't always clear them right out or associated files get updated etc., and Windows starts getting confused. Before Device Manager look in Add/Remove programs, but still may leave bits and pieces. Best to work in Safe Mode.

 

Hey Mattman: thanks for the input. Never thought of looking in add remove programs for ATI stuff, I'll bet it was there too. I'm going to pull the MOBO out tomorrow, will try it out of case with minimum, one drive, one video card on board sound.

I can only boot from CD or Floppy. Will not boot from C drive, even in safe mode. When booting with XP CD, can start repair install, but after loading files, install program reboots to Windows and instead of reinstalling, I get splash screen with progress bar that runs forever.

Bios is set to load AGP first.

Also, started having same old trouble with PCI IDE card, no drives on PCI card recognized by Windows.

I talked to Soyo support, they have RMA'd MOBO. Seems they suspect failure. We will see tomorrow.

I pulled the "C" drive and plugged it into this computer as slave, it reads out fine except it now has "C" as "H" and "D" as "G ". "D" is 2nd partition on drive. Hopefully when plugged back in as master on IDE 0, location 0 it will go back to being "C" again.

Can you tell me how to tell the voltage of AGP card? MOBO says only 1.5 volt card will work.

Talk about being crash king, so far in 90 days I have had 3 hard drive failures (one was from plugging in its power connector while machine running) and two motherboard failures if that is what this turns out to be.

I will take your advice on cleaning contacts, used to have to do that to get games to work on son's old Nintendo machine. I probably got my grubby fingers all over those contacts.


I just got my hands on a Pine video card that has both connectors, so if it is the right voltage, should work out of box.

I'll monitor this post tonite and start working on the hardware tomorrow.

Thanks for keeping me company through this one.

Martin

 

Seems to always come back to IDE problems. Let's hope the RMA will solve it all.

Running outside the case should rule out earthing/shorting of the M/B. It will also reduce the load on the PSU (and you have a fairly large load ).

If you need to load drivers with the PCI video card, you may need to adjust that AGP setting so that the BIOS does not search for AGP cards.

Drive letters will return to normal when you reconfigure the drives.

AGP voltage: would look up the specs at the card manufacturers website.
Type the model number and "specifications" into a search engine, may get you straight there.

Cleaning contacts: not only human oils, also what's carried on dust. Cooking smoke. I smoke, so the tars are going to be in and around my machine.

Wish I could be more help.

Matt

 

Not a lot to add thats going to help much, but that Raedon 7500 should have come with an adapter - no? I've got a couple of 7500 All-In-Wonders and while they are great cards for the money, I'm convinced there is a timing/memory/power problem with some of the original drivers. Ordered a new driver CD from ATI after being totally frustrated with their web downloads and that seemed to do the trick, but did clean OS installations too. Runs flawlessly with XP but still get an occasional oe exception error on shutdown or restart with 98se - 0028:0000000...........-> I'm totally convinced this is an ATI, Via, AMD thing but nobody wants to admit it.

As to your continuing saga re: Soyo MB, why don't you get a RAID MB - they have KT333, KT400 and now KT 600 RAID Boards if you like Soyo. Very stable boards but require high end memory - then you forget about your ongoing PCI RAID card problems. As another thought, just did a board two days ago and replaced a Promise PCI RAID controller with a Highpoint PCI RAID controller - excellent performance and went without a hitch - 3 HDD's ,clean XP install.

Last comment, off topic - what ever happened with your daughters machine? I lost track and haven't heard much - does that mean you finally got it squared away?

 

Hi Rockster, you back too. Maybe the three of us should start our own forum ?

I also have a Radeon 7500 (Gigabyte NON All-in-Wonder) on a AMD1700, Via C/S. Was a replacement for a GeForce 400mx that would not work on my motherboard. Didn't get a DVI/VGA adapter with it so I looked it up and purchased one locally.

This 7500 seems to work extremely well with 98SE. I run dual monitors on it, have upgraded the drivers (from Gigabyte), loaded three or so video control programs (ATI, Gigabyte, Ultramon) and it does not seem to have any trouble. So...maybe it is the "All-in-Wonder" part of the drivers that is giving the trouble. Can different parts of the drivers setup be installed and the problem drivers identified?

Just seems strange to me because mine seems pretty faultless.

Matt

 

Seemed mighty strange to me too - actually have 7500 Radeon All-In-Wonders on three different machines. Have done a little swap around as of late (always doing that). Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum with 333mhz chipset and 98se - get occasional oe errors on shutdown or restart with this video card. Soyo Dragon with 400 mhz via chipset and XP Pro - no errors. ABIT KT7A with dual boot - occasional problems with 98se, no problems with XP Pro. Also had another Soyo Ultra Dragon Platinum 333 (since replaced) that caused the exact same behavior with a 7500 and 98se.

0028: 00000000000 (give or take a few 0's)

Have worked for days & weeks trying to resolve this without success. Not really causing any problem, its just not right and I like things to run flawless. Now, the 7500 does pull some power but thats not an issue here. Its not memory related - tested with Samsung, Crucial, OCZ and Corsair. Its not a setup issue - have done more than a few clean installs trying to resolve this with different driver versions. Note - 98se will not lock up or misbehave in any way - this occurs only at shutdown or restart and its intermittant. Just requires power off and restart. My belief is its some kind of a timing issue with ATI, Via and AMD. Not to worry, just an irritation.

edit: martinr121 - you'll find all kinds of ATI stuff in your Windows System folder - more than enough to scare you. You will also need to remove ATI drivers from Sound, Video & Game controllers.

 

OK you two: Yeah, a board of our own makes sense to me since we are running the same hardware.

First the good news. My machine is running, now:

I did not buy an adapter for the ATI 7500 All In Wonder, as I was removing it from the board I broke off one of the little capacitors. Stuck my finger in the wrong place again. I sent it out for repair.

I bought a Pine Video AGP 440MX Nvida card which is now in the machine running the View Sonic 18" LCD monitor without a hitch. When I get the ATI card back, I'll get an adapter and put this card in my daughter's machine.

I also went out and bought a Soyo Dragon KT400 Ultra Platinum. I figured that would solve the ongoing problems with the Sil680 PCI IDE card. I just wanted it as it is supposed to run straight IDE drives w/o raid.

As these things go, I can't make it work. I have followed the manual's instructions to the letter. The problem: machine refuses to boot if the controller is enabled.

The machine goes through the normal BIOS proceedure, the onboard raid controller dectects the drives attached at 3 & 4,
and then sits there with the DOS screen with a blinking cursor. I have left it do that for over an hour, hoping it would find the boot drive that is 0 0 on IDE.

I have read and re-read the manual till my eyes are red and swollen. Nothing there or on Soyo's web site that I can find to get the machine to boot with the onboard raid controller enabled in BIOS. Instructions say to boot with it enabled. No Way on this machine.

If I disconnect all drives from 3 & 4, machine boots, which I did to get here.

So, Soyo Dragon owners, what do you have to say about that???

Martin

PS: I had to re-intall Windows again, again they made me call in, got the third degree on how many machines I have this copy running in. Told the guy if his software worked I wouldn't have to keep re-installing it.

 

With all HDD's on 3&4, just make sure your boot order includes RAID/ATA,SCSI - I have mine set to floppy first, CDROM next and RAID/ATA,SCSI third with boot from other devices enabled. I also flashed my bios to the 2aa6 bin file - see Soyo's site and make sure you get the right one for the 400mhz chipset (also using a different version of the 2aa6 for my 333mhz board. You also want to download V 2.34 Highpoint drivers and use these newer than what came with your MB drivers when prompted for (F6) drivers during XP install. That should make you very recognizable and very bootable - also set all of your HDD's to Cable Select before starting this whole process. Take your HDD's off IDE 1&2 - use 3&4 only. 1&2 can handle those "optical" drives.

edit: get rid of that stupid card for the time being.

2nd edit: As I recall you had two CD's and a zip drive - that would still leave one IDE header on #1 for an additional HDD after you have 4 HDD's on 3 & 4 - still think you need that stupid PCI card?

3rd edit: You don't need to set up any RAID configuration if you don't want to - just run 3&4 as if they were normal IDE headers. However, you still have to install the highpoint RAID drivers.

If you run 2 sticks of memory, use slots 1&3. Also, memory is a bit touchy on this MB - if you want to hit max performance. forget most of the store bought stuff. Personally, running Corsair XMS PC3200 on the 400 and OCZ PC2700 on the 333mhz. Crucial ran like garbage, while Samsung ran good but not as good as Corsair or OCZ.

 

Good afternoon Rockster: I really appreciate your advice on this problem. The reason I am trying to set up with boot on 1 is that neither 3 or 4 can access/run the opticals. What I have in mind is the backup problems I had with the Sil680 card. Never a problem booting from the card, just when booting from CD for restore of backup, the CD boot medium could not see the drives on PCI card.

With no access to drives from CD boot medium, backups are useless.

What is putting the frosting on my cookies is that Soyo very clearly states the board has the capability to run multiple (8) HDDs w/o Raid.

I didn't realize that meant you had to boot from 3 & 4, if that is in fact the case.

The setup I'm trying for is one hard drive and three optical drives on board's IDE 1 & 2 and three hard drives on 3 & 4.

The HDD on 1 would be the boot, Windows and programs, opticals for playing, burning, copying CD's & DVDs. Hard drives on 3 & 4 for storing digital imaging and backups. Where one AVI movie takes 12Gbs, I need all the storage I can get. These drives need to be able to see each other when the machine is booted from a CD.

When I had boot setup on PCI IDE controller, Windows CD boot could not find itself, nor could Drive Image or True Image read their backups. At least with the PCI Card, I was able to get it to run optical drives. I guess I could put Windows on a large drive, (another activation) Boot from 3, keep backups there, or maybe on 1, the backup programs need access to one drive to retrieve from and another to write to.

Do you know of any way to get this Dragon to boot from IDE 1 with Raid enabled on MOBO, HDDs attached, and Windows seeing all the drives???





Martin

Edit: I have the new drivers installed for High Point.
I have not flashed the BIOS, when I read each's description, none mentioned my problem, referenced other fixes I don't need.

When reading Soyo's fix for recognizing hard drives, they say to enable raid in BIOS, reboot, then do this and that. Well, this machine will not boot with Raid enabled in BIOS.

Edit two: I think what is happening is the machine is looking for boot on 3 & 4 and does not look at 1????????

 

OK, my turn

Remembering the problems and result of the previous thread, could there be drive overlays on the other drives you are working on...or...the Master Boot Records have become sour. If they were partioned and formated on the other motherboard, then they may not be able to be read on this one.

If you have a HD ready to go and can wipe it clean then I suggest doing a low-level format, repartition and reformat. See if it acts properly then. If so, then one by one you may need to backup your data and low-level format all of them.

Be carefull if you need to use Maxblast (I think low-level format is in Powermax, but you may need Maxblast to repartition and format). Maxblast is great at recognising drives, their size etc, but it is easy to fall into the trap of installing the DO, it almost forces you to use it, but you can avoid it.

Matt

Edit: Martin, if you are hazy at all about partitioning (eg., active, logical, extended etc. ) then a good reference is:
www.pcguide.com
THE reference site.

 

My 2 cents - put all of your hard drives on 3&4, including your system boot drive. I believe that will end your problems - your logic follows sound reasoning but has been corrupted by the experiences you had with that stupid card. Now, for the contradiction - you should be able to have a HDD on IDE #1 and use it for the system boot drive - I can't argue with that and have a couple of clients setup that way. In fact, I'm planning on going that way on my new DFI dual channel board by adding a serial ATA HDD to #1 primary in addition to the 4 IDE HDD's that are already setup on 3&4.

As to the Maxblast - send that garbage to Alabama and hope it never comes back. And, if its still on any of your drives, slave and FDISK them in another machine - note: partition magic may be needed to clean up some third party utilities.

edit: mattman makes a good point but low level formatting can be very dangerous - I'd save that for the last straw.

 

Hi to both of you, really appreciate your input.

The Maxblast thing is directly related to my inexperience. That Maxtor drive was the first one I ever bought and retail box comes with floppy Maxblast and instructions on how to use it to add the drive to the machine. Not a word of caution on the DO. Nor do I recall being informed it was unnecesary and would be better off not using it.

It has been supposed that the DO has caused no end of problems, but no real proof that is the case, only supposition or suspicion on part of MS tech support personell whose expertise is questionable in my mind. Some of their guys really know their stuff and others, well, no comment. So it is the luck of the draw when you call them.

I have irreplaceable files on everyone of the drives, all have been backed up but backups currently unuseable right now have access to two of them. One of the drives contains complete system backups of everything that was on the machine prior to the MOBO failure. At this point, formatting is not an option, not even as a last resort. I'd rather wait till I RMA the old Soyo board and rebuild on it, then do battle with the Sil680 drivers and the PCI card to get back to where I was. Or maybe (Rockster, don't read this part) put the PCI IDE card in this machine.

For now, I'm going to first put in a call to Soyo (open at 12:00pm eastern) and see what fixes if any they might have. If no resolution I'll follow your advice and put 4 hard drives on 3 & 4, opticals and one HDD drive (not boot) on 1 & 2 & see what happens. If by some accident the machine actually boots with all the drives connected, and Windows can see them, I'll see what Drive Image and/or Acronis True Image can do with backup. Ability to restore backups is my critical issue here.

If drives can be restored by either one of these progams by booting from CD, I'll keep the setup. If not, its back to the trenches.

See, all the good advice and I'll probably end up doing it my way. Keep the good advice coming though, I really need your support and appreciate it greatly.

I surely wish Ghost worked with NTFS. At one point I tried to go back to Fat32 just to try Ghost, Windows won't do it. Partition Magic won't either.

Martin

 

Soyo K400 Dragon Ultra Boot Sequence?

AARRGH!!! Before I go berserk, Help!!!

Rockster and Mattman: I've changed the topic, maybe someone who has had the problem with this motherboard might help.

Continuing..........

My confidence in being able to boot this machine from the Raid controller was sadly misplaced. I am unable to boot this machine with drives connected to the RAID controller under any circumstances, boot or otherwise. I think I have tried every possible setting.

With Raid enabled in BIOS, boot order in BIOS set to Floppy, CDROM, HDD 0, with HDD 0 as master ( "C ", boot drive) on channel 1 of IDE controller, Raid setting in Bios as Raid, ATA, SCSI, HDD(s) on raid controller channel 3 as master and/or slave, machine will not boot.

With the above setup, on powering up, IDE drives recognized in bios, Raid controller recognizes attached drives in DOS type screen, cursor blinks, and blinks and blinks and blinks. HDD LED indicates constant HDD activity. Continues for as long as I will let it. Screen indicates "press <control> <H>" to set RAID BIOS ". That does not work, RAID BIOS does not open.

Unplug the RAID drives, with RAID still enabled in BIOS, same routine, RAID says: "No Drives ", machine boots to IDE channel 1.
<Control> <H> during RAID bios sequence opens RAID BIOS that tells me since there are no drives connected I cannot set boot order. AARGH! again.

Switch "C" boot drive to channel 3 master on RAID controller, Boot order in Soyo BIOS: Floppy, CDROM, HDD 0; RAID enabled in Soyo BIOS, RAID boot order SCSI/RAID/ATA, press<control> <H> to open RAID BIOS, does not work, RAID BIOS will not open. After RAID recognizes drives attached, goes to screen displaying IRQ device settings, then Get error message: "Boot disc failure" Set RAID BIOS to boot order RAID/ATA/SCSI, same results, "Boot Disc Failure"

Same setups as above, set Soyo BIOS boot order to: Floppy, CDROM, SCSI, same results.

I have cleared CMOS almost every setting change, reset BIOS to Plug & Play, enabled escd, machine refuses to boot if there is any drives connected to any channel on enabled RAID controller.

No matter what, if there is a drive, and I have tried several, connected to the raid controller, this machine will not boot

If anybody can help I would be very grateful.

Martin

 

OK, first things frst - and lets be honest here - where is that PCI card when you are trying to do all of this?

 

OK - now for the meat. Boot order should include RAID/ATA,SCSI. You must have the correct Highpoint drivers installed or nothing - notta,notta - nothing you do is going to work. If I follow this correctly, you are still trying to use an already setup drive in a new (MB at least) machine. Would it not be much wiser to take one of those drives that is not mission critical, hook it up to #3 with nothing else (HDD wise) attached and do a clean install? Then you can put in the correct drivers at F6 prompt and eliminate all this writing and posting. I still think you have MaxBlast garbage on that original drive with the OS already installed. I would also encourage you to use Cable Select on all HDD drives except IBM Deskstars (well documented conflict with those on CS and Highpoint Controller).

You may find yourself having to clear CMOS more frequently with this MB than most others when you hit the wall and I have found that memory is quite sensative with this board. Regardless, it makes sense to first get this puppy running with a clean install and then start with a foolproof strategy to move all your mission critical data.

 

Hey Rockster, the PCI card is sitting on the dining room table. If you'd like, I can send you a picture of the table.

 

Gee. Thanks Pete, you are definately a real life saver!

Martin

 

re: dining room table - phew, you had me worried.