The saga of failsauce (new 880 mobo)

[Sxotty]

So I was trying to get my HTPC back together.

Fun starts with a new jetway hz03-gt-v2 motherboard, new ram, and old athlon x3 720 BE processor.

Put everything together, but the thing hangs on boot for ages.

Finally I get into BIOS and over time figure out that changing the SATA controller from IDE to AHCI makes it actually boot.

Next my sony BR drive is randomly being detected off and on and will not install windows. Just hangs at black screen after trying to load from DVD.

I pull out a DVD drive from another computer and viola it appears immediately. Goes into windows setup fine, but seems a tad weird. Copying files is stuck at 0 for a bit then jumps to finished immediately. It has been awhile since I installed so maybe that is how it works I forget. Expanding files takes a very long time and appears to be copying from the DVD. It makes me wonder if something is flaky with the HDD. Finally it gets to completing installation.

Reboots and says hypertransport sync flood error press del to continue.

Goes into windows and says there was an error tough cookies (also known as reinstall).

Now I am back where I started. I will update as things happen, but if anyone has any ideas that would be stellar


Next I will try using IDE mode without BR drive, and after that maybe an axe. That should make me feel better.

edit: Tried ide mode to no avail, back to AHCI
Lowered the voltage on RAM as Auto apparently was over volting ram significantly. Ran memtest with perfect results. Trying to install again, but it is behaving the same way.

Next up is lowering hypertransport link speed. Eventually I will have to see if I can get a BIOS update with bootable CD or something since I have no floppy.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Ouch. No ideas here, but a sympathetic "HANG IN THERE BUDDY!" to try and carry ya through.

 

[Sxotty]

Well now I need to figure out where the thing to enable extra cores is in the BIOS. Apparently the hypertransport sync flood error is associated with that. Of course seeing as I never enabled the 4th core I can't really figure out WTF it would have to do with anything

Thanks for the good vibes Digi. I may just have to RMA this silly thing though since nothing seems to work.

I have now done memtest and used hitachi's drive tools to test the HDD everything is peachy. I got it back to IDE mode with an optical drive that would work and everything still worked out exactly the same. (Install windows from DVD then it reboots, then upon next reboot hypertransport sync error and windows says reinstall)

 

[Malo]

Are you loading the drivers for the AHCI during install then creating a new partition?

 

[Grall]

Eventually I will have to see if I can get a BIOS update with bootable CD or something since I have no floppy.

I'd advise against flashing the BIOS when a system is as flaky as what you're experiencing, bricking the whole thing looks awfully inevitable I'd say... Then again at this point maybe you just don't care anymore.

 

[Sxotty]

I gave up on it, don't have time. More than anything I just wanted to figure out WTH was going on. I have another micro atx board on the way and an RMA on this one. Who knows what combination of factors led to this. Of course if it ends up being that the new board does it I will have to see if somehow something happened to CPU

 

[swaaye]

Yup that sounded like a defective mobo to me. This kind of thing is why I am starting to prefer buying complete systems. They do some testing for you, unlike the mobo manufacturers apparently.

For that matter, I prefer to buy notebooks locally because then I can return them the same day if they have problems. The saga of my ASUS G73-JH thoroughly burned that into my brain.

 

[Sxotty]

Yup that sounded like a defective mobo to me. This kind of thing is why I am starting to prefer buying complete systems. They do some testing for you, unlike the mobo manufacturers apparently.

For that matter, I prefer to buy notebooks locally because then I can return them the same day if they have problems. The saga of my ASUS G73-JH thoroughly burned that into my brain.

I know I am tempted myself. I never ever bought complete desktops. I mean I have been building them for over a decade now, and it seems more problematic than it used to be to say the least. Meh hopefully things will be peachy for awhile after this and then I will happily continue to get my own stuff together.

 

[Grall]

You know, Swaaye, those Apple iMacs look more and more tempting for each year that pass... Although they're essentially un-expandable (other than RAM), they've pretty much reached the point of "good enough" now, that they'll last a bunch of years to the point where you'd bought a new system anyway.

Apple tax still applies though, and if you don't like the styling you're not gonna be happy, and if you don't like Macos (maybe want to play some friggin' games for example ) then there may be some issues with bootcamp too, but if it wasn't for the fact almost no entertainment software is released for the mac I personally wouldn't mind switching.

My PC takes about a friggin' MINUTE to POST these days, the BIOS wonked out a few weeks back and now it sits for an age looking for harddrives and I don't know what else, and making other odd pauses here and there for no discernible reason. It's driving me buggo. It's also a mess of cables hanging off of it, and cables slithering all over inside it, and half a dozen fans that make a lot of combined noise, and I've had a bunch of different LCD screens too and most of them were crappy. It'd be nice to just replace all of that with ONE self-contained unit that has a NICE screen.

But I couldn't afford it, not right now anyway, and there's the issue with games like I mentioned...

 

[Sxotty]

BTW I got an ASUS mico -atx board in. Windows installed easy. All drives immediately recognized. Everything seems peachy. I don't know if I should give horrible reviews to the jetway when I return it though. I feel bad since I could be an outlier and it has no reviews yet, but at the same time I feel like I should say something so a poor sap doesn't fall into the same trap.