DS3 - Yet more issues.

[FatRakoon]

Ok, been using the DS3 now as both my main Board and my No.2 and they are both showing the same problems.

Firstly, when I start up the PC, I have an error box that comes up with SPI Error. This can come up a couple of times. It only started once I tried to do the full install of my Creative Driver CD, I have now killed off all the junk that came with it, but its not stopped the error box?

Also another one that comes up is themeupd.exe Again, only since the creative install.

The ATI Control panel is also a pain too, however, I would be more inclined to blame ATI on this one as I have seen these problems on some of my AMDs too!

Also I have still not been able to run Need For Speed Underground 2 for over 10 minutes also, and its one problem I want to fix cos my kids and I love the game.

My IDE Cards are also giving me some issues too!
No matter which one I use, I have some problems... If they are RAID Cards, they conflict with the onboard IDE Port, some allow me to use the PC but both the Card and my DVD Drives are not available, or they crash the PC stone dead, and the best solution I have is the ITE8212 card which does indeed work fine in Windows itself but stops me gettign into the BIOS!!

In a short while I am going to be giving XP64 a shot in this board, and I will be tryign to go on the onboard Audio and not using an IDE Card, just to see how far I can hack the thing, but at this time, all I feel towards this board is that its yet another pile of gigabyte junk.

 

[FatRakoon]

Ok, I installed XP64, or at least the Drive I used already had the last XP64 install on, which hung on the other PC ( Junky NForce 6100 chipset ) and I used that and it started up just fine, so I updated the drivers etc and threw in NFSU2.

It gave me the register program just fine, and I have been playing NFSU2 for a fair while and never had anythign of an issue at all?

Ok, I put XP32 back onto it and it started to crash again!??

Must be my XP CD then maybe?

Cant be that drivers for XP64 are more reliable than XP32?

Either way anyway, I got a Licence for XP64 that I am not using in any system, so what better than to use it on this PC?

 

[Cob]

Some of us x64 XP users will argue that it's a far more stable OS than x86, being based on Server 2003 rather than XP.

I would assume that x64 drivers (usually the exact same as x64 Server 2003 drivers) are slightly more reliable due to them needing to be used in mission critical systems.

 

[Robert]

Ok, been using the DS3 now as both my main Board and my No.2 and they are both showing the same problems.

Firstly, when I start up the PC, I have an error box that comes up with SPI Error. This can come up a couple of times. It only started once I tried to do the full install of my Creative Driver CD, I have now killed off all the junk that came with it, but its not stopped the error box?

Also another one that comes up is themeupd.exe Again, only since the creative install.

The ATI Control panel is also a pain too, however, I would be more inclined to blame ATI on this one as I have seen these problems on some of my AMDs too!

Also I have still not been able to run Need For Speed Underground 2 for over 10 minutes also, and its one problem I want to fix cos my kids and I love the game.

My IDE Cards are also giving me some issues too!
No matter which one I use, I have some problems... If they are RAID Cards, they conflict with the onboard IDE Port, some allow me to use the PC but both the Card and my DVD Drives are not available, or they crash the PC stone dead, and the best solution I have is the ITE8212 card which does indeed work fine in Windows itself but stops me gettign into the BIOS!!

In a short while I am going to be giving XP64 a shot in this board, and I will be tryign to go on the onboard Audio and not using an IDE Card, just to see how far I can hack the thing, but at this time, all I feel towards this board is that its yet another pile of gigabyte junk.

I setup my DS3 as follows:

2*320gb hard disks on the JMicron controller in raid 0
1*160gb on the Intel ICH8 controller
1*DVDRW on the ICH8 controller

Now, say if I'd been moving data a lot on the raid - causing fragmentation, my PC would just lock when it was being defragged. My mouse would go all jerky and it'd lock. Anyway - yesterday whilst installing BFME2 on it I had numerous lockups, so swapped the drives to the ICH8 controller and took them off raid. So far my system seems stable and I don't get a jerky mouse (so far, touch wood).

 

[FatRakoon]

COB:

Yeah, I know XP64 is based on SVR2K3 and what put me off using it was pretty much mounting ISOs more than anything else as I think all my hardware ( Except TV Cards and Card Readers ) run on it just fine, as does all my software ( Except Partition Magic & PageDeFrag ), but then I realised Daemon tools mounts the images and so really I have no excuse.

Very happy with it so far...

I got 2 x 80GB Hitchi Drives that are being used for the OS - One drive for XP64 the other for XP32, although I have decided to NOT have them dual booting but rather I just unplug one instead of the other "Just in case"

I have had a crash I will say, but just the one, but saying that, what I have done, is setup one user, played it through till I got my own car, and then took it to the garage and then played the first few bunchof games until I got a Sponsor, and I did this another 4 times ( Me and the 3 kids ) and I rushed through all of this and did it in one swoop, I was also CTRL-TABbing through during finishing off the install, so I suppose its going to happen if I am doing that!

I have also done a freshie on XP32 and again, I am completely unable to even get to a stage where it can save a game, so point proven I think there!

Sticking to XP64 then it seems.



ROBERT:

I had managed to install to RAID before on this board, and I never had any jerking of any kind, so its possible its driver related. I will say though, that I only managed it when a normal SATA was present, and so, I assume that as its failed every other time when no other drive was on the PC, that it actually installs its boot sector to a normal Drive even though you have Windows on the RAID... Really annoying.

I gave up in the end and now just use normal Drives to play.

If you still want RAID just for the fun of it for D: or anything but C: then using the other ports and have them setup with Windows' own Software RAID will be just as quick as normal RAID... OR at least not slower enough to worry about anyway.