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gigabyte motherboard problems

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by aschol 1 view

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OK, I just put together a new computer and am having some problems getting it up and running and I think the MB is bad. I am fairly sure that this is the problem but just want to make sure.

Here are my reasons:
1)The jumper settings were not set to the factory default to autodetect....had to change them.

2)Cannot install either w2k or xp...it gets to the point where it installs the nw setup and then does a dump trying to find ntoskrnl.exe

3)can install 98se but got several fatal errors while installing and once installed, got bsod several times and has trouble reading the cd drive, also had several random restarts.

4)when installing w2k also had trouble recognizing the boot partition signiture after the required restart

5)POST screen will not save the cpu type....it ofted switches back and forth between athlon xp and athlon xp 1500+ which is odd because it is a 2200+

whomever can confirm this wins 2500 points!!!

12 replies

by cg it

You do not mention which Gigabyte board you have, whether it's a DDR board or not, what type of memory your using, etc. Most new motherboards don't have jumpers anymore (not sure about Gigabyte)etc. etc. None of the problems you've stated direct to a bad motherboard, rather maybe missing software, chipset drivers, misconfigured BIOS settings, mismatched hardware. Motherboards do go bad, don't get me wrong, but I would look further. Socket A mainboards are designed to accept both Duron and Athlon processors. The Duron processor runs at 200Mhz FSB [100 X2 clock speed]. The Athlon's run at 266 MHz FSB [133 X2 clock speed]. If you left the default on, your Athlon will run at the default 200 Mhz FSB and subsequently, the BIOS will not show the full 1330 mhz. Fatal install errors may be a cause of read/write between your CD Rom Drive and the Hard Drive. If you have em set up as master slave, change them to reside on different IDE channels. Trouble recognizing the MBR may be due to a bad setup and partitioning of the hard drive. Delete the MBR, delete all partitions, rerun fdisk, creating a new MBR, new primary drive, format the primary drive try again.

by cg it

I just ran across an article about Gigabyte boards and problems with the new Gefore 4 vid cards. Seems that there is a capacitance problem on the mainboard which causes problems with booting to an O/S. If your using the new Geforce 4 vid cards, givethe Gigabyte techs a call. 626-854-9338. They should be able to help you with resetting the vcore voltage in the BIOS.

by thechas

Looking over your problems, I suspect a bad BIOS, or RAM module.

Check and see if Gigabyte has a new BIOS for your motherboard, and if the fix list addresses some of your problems.

Next, swap the RAM with known good RAM, or at least RAM from adifferent mfg.

I have had several Socket A motherboards that refussed to properly set the CPU speed, and had to set it manually. I suspect that there is an error in the CPU ID table in the core BIOS code.

Was this motherboard specified as "New" or "Refurbished"
Often, refurbished motherboards are handled by 3rd party repair services, and NOT the mfg.

Yes, the out-of place jumpers suggest that someone else has tried to use this motherboard.
But, that does not mean that the board is bad, or damaged.

Chas

by aschol

new mb, ram is 512 ddr and is good.....bios was one of the things wron so you are the closest and win

by dcosgrove

You may have a bad hard drive or cd-drive causing the install problems. As far as not saving the processor info, there is usually one lonely jumper to set the FSB of the processor. If that is set right, it should detect properly once and always. Otherwise bad bios may be the answer.

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