Adventures in Troubleshooting

[cjorli]

Hi all,

I just got off of the troubleshooting rollercoaster and thought I would share the experience with you. Hopefully, in some way, somebody might be helped through this...

It all started about a week ago when I got my second stick of PC2100 memory from a company that I have had dealings with over the past couple of years. Excited I ripped open the package and headed straight for my my PC. I slapped in the memory into my ASUS A7V266 motherboard, powered up, saw the 1Gig mark in my bios check, and headed into Windows XP. I was elated!

About 60 seconds after I logged in, my computer rebooted... without my consent :angry2:. So I played around in my bios for a few minutes and made sure everything looked. "Seems fine," I said to myself and saved changes... reboot. Everything progressed as expected, got into XP... 60 seconds... Crash . Something was fishey.

I checked everything out, looks good... try again, Crash. "Ok," I said to myself, "It must be a bad module." So, I get an RMA number and sent the chip back. I thought I would try another brand of memory this, so I ordered 512MB Kingston Technologies PC2100 DDR. And waited patiently.

The second stick came. Excited once again, I ran to my PC. Gently placed the memory into its new home, rebooted, Windows XP, 60 seconds.... Crash! "What the crap!" Slipped out of my mouth. I start going through the process once again. Everything looks good. Reboot, 60 seconds... crash. Now I was getting upset.

I search all over Google and began to find many others having issues with their A7V266 mobos when attempting to place more than 1 stick of any memory in their boards. I resigned for the inevitable, I'll have to get an RMA from ASUS since my 1 year warrenty with the company I purchased from was up (2 years left with ASUS). I go to Asus' website and discover quickly that all the places I need to look weren't working properly. Frustrated after many hours of trying to contact any form of customer support, I called the place of purchase. Quickly they find a number for ASUS (not published anywhere on ASUS' website, grrr...).

Depressed now, I decided I would call Asus and hope for the best. But first I would try something that I normally stay away from, flash the bios with a beta release of the next bios :x. I flashed, shut down, saw "bios revision 1014.002 beta," boot into XP, 60 seconds.... no crash. "What the crap!" Amazed, I took a shower (to give it some time to crash) and came back to see my PC still running. Sweet! After all that trouble, a simple beta release of the bios took care of everything. Elated again, I hop on Aximusers to tell all.

The End.

PS: ASUS phone number 510/739-3777
Motherboard: A7V266
Bios Update: 1014.002 beta

[PDA_designer40]

Hey I was reading your trouble you had with the memory and I am thinking while reading your message, flash the BIOS, beause a few years when I was new to computers , I had problems with my computer trying to get all the basic stuff to work with mine and after a long time of putting windows in and losing it all, i decided to "flash" and bang ,no more problems at all. I was no doubt a little nervous doing that, being I was new and I knew if I messed up , well the motherboard was going back to the factory. I also did that to another motherboard just to make it up to date and it has had no problems at all. I just love computers, now that I am getting this "little" computer, I cannot wait till I can see how to tweak that thing. Glad you listened to me, Bye