Comp locks up in Windows

[TechGuyInVA]

Hi everyone,

Yesterday, I started putting a new computer with an Athlon Tbird 950 together and everything was going fine until I installed a SB Live! card in, then all heck broke loose. =( In my first attempt, I loaded Win ME in my basic setup. Hardware wise, all I had was the following:

950MHz Tbird
Abit KT7-RAID mb
128MB RAM
WD 40GB 7200rpm hd
HP 9500 CD-Writer
Teac floppy drive
Asus V7100 Geforce MX graphics card.

So after setting all that up, I installed the VIA 4in1 drivers, the High Point 370 RAID drivers, etc.. I then rebooted the machine and tested things by opening different windows to see if everything was ok. Check the Device Manager to see if all the devices are where they should be. So everything is fine so far. I then installed the video drivers for the Asus V7100. That went without a hitch. Rebooted, tested system, etc. and everthing was fine as far as I can tell. Now this is where things started going down hill. =( I installed a SB Live! Platinum card and Windows found the drivers and such. Then when the Windows desktop came up, everything just locked up! So I went in safe mode, remove the SB drivers and then rebooted in normal and Window reinstalled drivers. The thing happened; Windows just locks up again! I thought, maybe the card is defective. So swapped another SB card that I have from a different machine. But the same things happens to the new machine; while the old machine works fine with either SB card. So by now, I'm quite ticked off at all this. =P I removed the card along with the drivers and booted the machine. Lo and behold, Windows comes up without any problems! Ok, so put the card back into the machine and it locks up again! =( What I haven't tried is installing a different PCI card other than the SB card (I'll try that when get home from work).

So now I'm thinking, maybe Win ME doesn't like this card. I reformatted everything and loaded Win 98SE hoping to get better results. Unfortunately, Win would just lock up after I intall the SB Live! card.

I've made sure the BIOS for the KT7-RAID is up to date. As well as the VIA 4in1 drivers (version 4.25).

Another thing I'll try checking later is the CAS latency on the RAM. I know for a fact that the RAM I have is rated at CAS 3. I'll give that a shot later. But other than that, for the life of me, I can't think of anything else to do! =(

Please help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[daveleau]

This is a widespread problem with the SBLive. Don't have much time now but it has to do with either a conflict with the SBLive and another IRQ or the legacy SB 16 emulator at IRQ5. Try moving things around in your dev mgr and changing resources. Try disabling things not needed (com ports and such). Try putting the sc in another slot to get the hardware to assign it another IRQ.

Godd luck
Dave

[TechGuyInVA]

Dave,

I had tried reinstalling the SB Live! card in different slots as well assigning it different IRQs, but to no avail. The machine would just lock up when Windows loads up. I've never encountered this problem with my Asus boards (3 of them) or my Socket 7 Gigabyte board. It's only with this Abit KT7-RAID board that's giving this lockup problem.

What I also have done was installed an old SB AWE64 card and a Netgear ethernet card. There were no lockups with any of these two card installed. So it would appears that the SB Live! card is the culprit.

Another problem that I was experiencing was that the 950 Tbird was overheating really quick when I mated the cpu with an Alpha PAL6035 heatsink/fan. For some reason, the Alpha wasn't working properly to cool the cpu. I reseated the Alpha, made sure I had enough thermal grease, reassembled the heatsink/fan, etc., but the heat problem still persisted. I don't know, maybe there was something that I had overlooked. =/ Anyway, I decided to install a Globalwin FOP32 heatsink/fan and the heat problem has been resolved now. =) I must say, the Globalwin heatsink cools the cpu really quick!

Has anyone else ran into lockup problems with the SB Live! and the Abit KT7-RAID?

Thanks,

Tuan