HELP!! I'm going CrAzY!!!

[bibleboy3]

Hi All,
I figured I could find the answer here to my dilemma given that there are so many professional computer people here.. any way here is my problem… I’m building a system for a friend and he is a “gamer” so DAW stuff is not a big concern to him but I figured that you guys could give me the answers or point me in the right direction.. here are the specs:

Mother board = MSI K7N2 with Nvidia nForce 2 chipset

CPU = Athlon 2500XP with a Barton core

Memory = Samsung (Micron) 256M DDR

Floppy = Sony

1st CDRW = SONY 32 x 10 x 40

2nd CDRW = Plextor 52 x 24 x 52

HD = Maxtor 80 Gig 7200 RPM 8 Meg Buffer ( with Windows XP corp. )

Power supply = Xcase 550 watt

Video Card = Gforce 5200 128M


Ok now here’s the problem the system will not boot up.. I get a weird blue screen (stop error screen) with this code *** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF9E49640, 0x0000034, 0x00000000) could somebody tell me what I’m doing wrong here??? Because this thing should’ve booted up?? I’m open to ANY and ALL suggestions thank you in advance for all your help


May Jesus bless you all
Sincerely,
Bill

[TensTheBlend]

Does all this also include a fresh OS install? I recently rebuilt my system using my old drive (Maxtor) with a new MB/CPU/RAM but with an old install of Windows XP pro still on the drive. It would "blue screen" until I totally reformated the drive and did a fresh re-install of XP pro.

Also MSI boards are known to "overclock" the CPU as a way to cheat performance benchmark tests. An interesting way to beat the benchmarks! Apparently they found a way to do it "on the fly" only during program computations, so it doesn't show being overclocked at idle in bios.

Still I'd check the obvious like making sure all the wiring connections, RAM cards, and such are all installed correctly.

[maggotcontrol]

That board doesn't like Samsung modules at 166mhz fsb and beyond.
Newegg is selling PC3200 Buffalo branded memory with Winbond CH-5 chips for about $90 shipped. They work very well with NF2 boards and your gamer friend will appreciate their high overclockability : )

Yoshi
www.studiokobari.com

[maggotcontrol]

Also MSI boards are known to "overclock" the CPU as a way to cheat performance benchmark tests. An interesting way to beat the benchmarks! Apparently they found a way to do it "on the fly" only during program computations, so it doesn't show being overclocked at idle in bios.
[/B]

Nah, MSI doesn't do that. However, it and many other manufacturers allows YOU to do that by a simple change in parameters in the BIOS. It is also not a cheat in anyway. (except when a system builder sells you a PC with an XP 2500+ running at 3200+ speeds and tells you that you have a 3200+ chip installed, which I've seen happen)

Overclocking really does make a system faster by pushing hardware limits beyond their rated speeds.

Manufacturers doesn't always waste their production time and money by specifically building slower rated CPU's (such as XP 1700+ while the 2600+'s are out). They make large batches of CPU's and test them at different speeds. If a specific batch doesn't run at certain speeds, they label them as slower chips. (this by no means is an accurate depiction of what really goes on but that's the concept)

If you do some searches for overclocking, you'll run into words like "week of" or "stepping." There are codes printed on the CPU's if you look closely. They are basically indications that tells you what production line they came from. As you can imagine, certain steppings allow for a higher overclock.

So for example, if you recently bought an Athlon XP 1700+ and luckily it's a Thoroughbred B core (which you can tell by looking at the stepping), you can most likely overclock that chip to at least 2200+ speeds and get away with a faster system without paying for a faster rated chip.

Unfortunately, all that doesn't come without the bad things. When overclocking, you're also possibly compromising stability by running the CPU hotter and out of spec. You may also need larger and louder heatsinks and fans to keep them cool enough depending on the amount of overclock too.

Yoshi
www.studiokobari.com

[Michael Quayle]

For a gaming machine, I'd also go with at least 512 mb of RAM aswell. 256mb just doesn't cut it for the newest apps these days, I'm afraid.

[TensTheBlend]

A quote from this article I saw about MSI:

"MSI Admits to FSB Overclocking"

"The lab engineers made a curious discovery when taking a closer look at the 865 Neo 2 from MSI: the manufacturer had integrated an ingenious logic that increased the FSB clock from 6% to 8% when programs were run, which automatically led to overclocking the processor..."

The full article:
http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030522/index.html

Still, most gamers would probably love this feature and it is also on a different MB than bibleboy3 is dealing with...

[This message has been edited by TensTheBlend (edited 09-21-2003).]

[This message has been edited by TensTheBlend (edited 09-21-2003).]

[maggotcontrol]

Wow. I stand corrected! That is a very interesting discovery and was not even considered in my post above.

What I was talking about was the ability to overclock from a user's standpoint.

Thanks for the link.

Yoshi
www.studiokobari.com

[bibleboy3]

Hi All,
thanx for all the great "input" LOL I've discovered that its a bios problem. ssssooooooo I've tried to flash the bios and doesn't seem to wanna take?? so could some body tell me the procedure for flashing a bios step by step?? cuse I think I'm forgeting a step some where?? thanx again

May Jesus bless you all
Sincerely,
Bill

[bibleboy3]

UPDATE:

Hi all,
First the puter store told us we could use a 2200xp chip and it would work without having to flash the bios so we changed the chip... wellllll it DIDN'T work and we Discovered that the board is bad GGGGRRRRRRRRRR I swapped out the MB and every thing worked fine. so we're going to take the MB back today and try and get a replacement. so the saga continues...


May Jesus bless you
Sincerely,
Bill

[bibleboy3]

UPDATE:#2

Hi All,
Well we took the board back.. it turns out that the memory (Samsung) wouldn’t let the bios flash weird huh?? Any way they changed out the memory and flashed the bios for us then they gave us some “Kingston” to replace the Samsung that we had gotten from them when we bought the board…. So I changed out the parts from my good board ( used my known good board to test individual parts) to this new MSI board that we just got flashed the day before. Well wouldn’t ya know it I went to open the “Kingston” memory and it had Samsung printed on the chips.. soooo we took that back… GGGGRRRRR and got some PNY and I’m glad to say its up and working fine… “FINALLY” :S


May Jesus bless you all
Sincerely,
Bill

[maggotcontrol]

Did I not already warn you about the Samsung modules not liking that board? Best compatibility for NF2 is memory using Winbond CH-5 and BH-5 chips.

Yoshi
www.studiokobari.com