Tale of woe... Shuttle / ASUS

[Ampzilla_M]

Here's the system I'm trying to get running...

ASUS A7V333 mobo, BIOS 1011, w/o RAID, rev 1.02
256M Muskin PC2700, single stick
AMD Athlon XP 1800+, w/Thermaltake Volcano 5
New Antec 400W PS. SL-400W
WD Caviar 13.6 Gig HD master
WD Caviar 540M slave
Cyberdrive 48x MAX CD-ROM
Hercules 3D Prophet 2 MX (GeForce 2 MX) latest drivers
Enlight 7237 mid-tower case (replaced PS with the Antec)
Win 98SE

(old board = Shuttle AK31A w/256M stick of Crucial PC2100)

The original power supply in the Enlight smoked, so I replaced it with the Antec. When I got that back together the HD's would not be detected. Figured the mobo IDE channels were wiped, so bought the ASUS. Installed it last weekend and it booted straight into Windows. Didn't even go into safe mode! Ran the latest 4 in 1 drivers from VIA. All was well for 2 days. Was playing Unreal Tournament for about 15 minutes when the thing locked up. Hit the reset but never was able to get back to Windoze. I bought the Mushkin stick thinking that might be it, but no change.

Right now the system completes the POST (the little voice says so) but it hangs after detection of the hardware and assignment of IRQ's etc. Sometimes it hangs for a long time on the primary drive but eventually finds it, then it says 'disk boot failure'. I tried the drives in this PC (K6-2/450) and they boot/work just fine. I tried all the usual tricks including resetting the CMOS, playing with memory settings, UDMA settings etc.etc. I removed the board from the case & booted to a floppy into Win 98. When I tried FDISK it says 'no hard drives found'. To me this is a mobo problem, but it's so similar to the Shuttle 'failure' that it scares me into thinking I'm doing something basically wrong.

I am not a neophyte at this (built #1 in 1986). This is driving me & my wife nuts! Sorry this is so long, but thought you should have the history. How do I fix this??? :(

[Slitelyused]

Have you checked the jumper settings for the CPU/DIMM ( BELO0 and BELO1),, I just bought an Asus A7n266-VM and the manual was written wrong on page 19,, Just a thought,,I had to change mine for it to work,,,After trouble shooting a day and a half,,

[Red R]

I think you have a conflict between Windows and your BIOS. I believe that both are tring to assign IRQ's. Turning off this option in Windows should solve the problem

[BigBlue66]

Normally, when FDISK reports "No harddrives found", it's a surefire indication that the harddrive in question has gone south.

However, in this instance, you say that both harddrives work fine on a different system.

With all that in mind, I would say the motherboard is at fault here, specifically the IDE controllers.

Take it back pronto for a replacement.

Good luck.

[Ampzilla_M]

Thanks a lot guys for the suggestions! BigBlue66 got it right! I tried the WD Data Lifeguard tools, and below is what it told me.

============= Data Lifeguard BIOS Check Log File ========================

Int 13h Devices: 0
ATA Devices: 1
ATAPI Devices: 0

================================================== =======================

IDE Drive 1: BIOS is not controlling this drive at all.

System BIOS is NOT controlling your drive(s) properly:


================================================== =======================

I thought possibly a BIOS flash might help. It worked flawlessly, but didn't change anything. While I was
checking the board out visually etc, I put my finger on chip U33, just to the right of IDE ports, and couldn't
keep it on for more than 1/2 second. I think that means the temp is about 100'C on that IC. It's probably
the culprit! Bottm line - this things's going back tomorrow! I already have the RMA number. I see on
asusboards.com forums that this board has some reliability problems! Hope the next one's a goody. Wish
me luck and thanks again!