A8N32 replacement

[w3bbo]

I'm now totally confused. Upgraded my bios again to 1103 and expected loads of blue screen erros but nothing happened, the board works flawlessly. I'm starting to like this board a little bit more after all those hours trying to make it work! I can't explain why, can it be Windows installation as this time I installed normal Windows XP Pro, not the Corp one?
Try to use the support CD, flash your bios to 0703 then install Windows again to see what happens, then upgrade it to 1103, that's what I did.
OCUK offered to exchange a different motherboard, still thinking whether I should get the Abit AN8-32X. What do you guys think, stick with A8N32?

I'll agree the Asus bios support is not the best, I personally use 1009 which I have found to be most stable without the bugs of 703. Like others have said it could have been a corrupt bios or a corrupt windows installation that was causing the problems you were having. I doubt the corp version of windows was to blame unless your 'copy' was corrupt in the first place. With all the trouble you have had which now seems to be solved I would stick with what you have than risk more trouble with a new board.

 

[mj3zero]

The antecs are good PSU's, Q-tec are not. Have you tried updating the drives firmware?

Yip, took the NEC to v1.07 and still no joy. I then plugged it into the Sil IDE card and had the exact same results . Works fine at 8x on single layer disks, but there are times during the burn where the buffer drops to zero - which it never did up until I upgraded. I only have one dual layer disk left so I'm going to take it out and hook it up to my P4 i845 server and do some more testing before RMA'ing the drive (as it's only 3 months old).

I'm pretty certain it is the drive and not the controller now - the fact it does the same on the Sil has to mean something.

If it is bad, I guess I'll be lookin for another brand....

Cheers
mj

 

[toucam]

I'll agree the Asus bios support is not the best, I personally use 1009 which I have found to be most stable without the bugs of 703. Like others have said it could have been a corrupt bios or a corrupt windows installation that was causing the problems you were having. I doubt the corp version of windows was to blame unless your 'copy' was corrupt in the first place. With all the trouble you have had which now seems to be solved I would stick with what you have than risk more trouble with a new board.

Cheers for that, I probably will give Asus a go this time

mj3zero, RMA your old drive and see if they can exchange you a LG one. When it comes to writers I've never bought anything but LG

 

[mj3zero]

Cheers for that, I probably will give Asus a go this time

mj3zero, RMA your old drive and see if they can exchange you a LG one. When it comes to writers I've never bought anything but LG

Thanks for the heads up, I have heard a few good reports on the LG writers and reckon it's time I gave one a whirl. The NEC is definitely on the way out, I hooked it up to my P4 server and it did similar things - though I did actually get the dual layer disk to burn ok. It is still doing the fluctuating buffer and one single layer disk took 35 minutes to burn - for some reason it reverted to PIO mode The IDE led is still lit up like a christmas tree and even though the dual layer disk burned and verified - it had "rings" and was jittery on playback.

It seems NECs can be flaky in this regard, ie failing slowly. Touch wood my Pioneer keeps on trucking - it's a 105 and I got it the week they were released in the UK. Nearly 3 years old and still going strong, I was tempted to try the 110 but it seems the latest Pioneers are not up to the same standard.

Good to hear your rig is now working fine. As I said previously, I have been very impressed with the performance of the a8n32 with the Opteron. I borrowed my brothers copy of Quake4 (again) but this time it's totally playable If I could just afford some new storage I'd be sorted for another couple of years......

all the best
mj