K7M Athlon 700 setup not working! Please help

[flightsimcanada.com]

Hello there,

I just received my K7M, Athlon 700, and ATI Rage Fury Maxx 64MB video card.

I installed everything as specified in the manuals, booted successfully, but then that's when the problems started coming.

As soon as I entered win98, the OS started loading many new hardware devices and drivers, except for my CD-ROM. Not until I kept fiddling and fiddling with the powercord that it finally worked.

After rebooting, I could not get into Win9x, as it just stopped doing anything after the password box came up to log into Windows.

THe only way around this problem was to delete all hardware entries from within safe mode, and then boot into Win98. However, now I once again have no CD-ROM to load drivers.

I am running at 16 colours, no CD-ROM, and probably many more errors here and there.

What can I do? I need to get this PC running ASAP for work, and it won't even see my CD-ROM to install drivers (which I had actually done when the CD-ROM was visible, only to no avail).

Windows sometimes loads up to four device entries per network card, which is rather odd. This causes errors I presume.

I'm stumped, tired, and want to have some fun with the new PC. Please help!

Here are my PC specs:
700MHz Athlon
Fury Rage Maxx
SB Live! Value
128 PC 100 RAM
2 10mbps network cards
Maxtor VL20 8.4GB
Maxtor VL20 1.6GB

Currently I have taken out everything but the SB Live and Fury. The CD-ROM is installed to my knowledge, and does spin on startup but does not work in Windows.

THanks for your time and for the help.

[flightsimcanada.com]

It's me gain. Would it be wiser to just format the drive, and start fresh? I'm thinking this could be the only way to resolve the problem at this point.

Maybe my CD-ROM will boot up if I load DOS drivers...

Please help!

[nachtgeist]

Is your CD-ROM drive detected during POST (when drives are detected and listed)? If not, the problem is somewhere in the connection or the hardware, or you might need to set the BIOS to look for a drive on that IDE port. Does the CDROM have jumpers to set it to Master/Slave and do you have these correctly set?

If installing a completely new system, the FIRST thing you want to do before removing the old hardware is remove all the entries from the Device Manager - that way Windows doesn't think there's some conflict with hardware that's not there anymore.

Adam

[BG]

Hi,
Had a similar problem with a rebuild I was doing. Check to be sure cable is attached properly (red line to pin 1) and that your power supply wiring is connected properly or not a broken pin inside. Hope this helps, it was the wiring that was wrong with mine.

[Maginno]

My friend just got an Athlon and K7M board and had a similar problem except it was his second hard drive that wouldn't run or be recognized. Only every 3rd or 4th attempt to start the computer would it be recognized. We concluded that his PS was underpowered. He went out and got a 300W PS and everything is fine. His setup was similar to yours. Just a thought. Good luck!

[Anton Rohan]

Hello,

Please scroll down at look at the reply for Scottish "Problems with the Asus K7M". You will find all the answers to your problem.

Anton Rohan

[Scottish]

Yeah, I'd agree with Anton, have a look at my problems, which seem to be broadly similar to yours..

My advice is to start from scratch with your HD, ie complete repartition and format. Take ALL your boards except for Video Card and try and install that way cos the SB card could be causing problems (at least I had some teething probs caused by my SB Live).

Also if you're having boot up problems it might be an idea to flash your BIOS with the latest update (I used 1008) because they're some well documented bugs in the BIOS which is supplied with the board.

I too was at the point of giving up with this board until I found this very informative site, my other bit of advice is listen to what these guys tell you, it certainly saved me a bunch of cash sending the board back!

Finally check what type of PSU you've got. I originally had a Enlight REV C 250W PSU which is incompatible with the K7M.

Hope that helps, and good luck!!

Scotty

[flightsimcanada.com]

Thanks for all of the responses.

I finally got things running:

After rebooting several times trying to get Windows to recognize the new hardware, I placed the Win98 bootdisk into the drive. I booted with CD support, and verified I could read the drive properly. I immediately popped in the Win98 CD and tried re-installing. It worked. The system then booted up with CD support, and actually allowed me to install my drivers for the Fury Maxx.

Ok, everything was fine, then the screen went blank http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Had a call to ATI's tech support, and after some 30 minutes of reporting to them exactly what was going on, they concluded I was experiencing the problems thousands of users are.

There is no fix for the monitor blackouts, and they only know it's memory mapping related. So far, no fix is available, and it could be some time before we do see a fix.

At the moment the system seems quite stable at 256 colours, and I guess I have to keep it that until new drivers become available.

Thanks very much for all the help!

Take care,