system lock up on KT&A-RAID

[jrg70]

I've been testing and tweaking my system for a couple of weeks now and as I've changed settings I've encountered lockups. Last night I tried an experiment. My system had locked at some point during the day. Keyboard and mouse were unresponsive. Before doing a hard reset I tried to acces the HD through another computer on the LAN. I was able to access the HD and copy a file from it. I was also able to launch a program from that HD. That obviously means the system was not in total lock. Can this help to determine what would cause the lock up? The NIC and HD were obviously working fine. As well as the CPU being able to perform some functions. Is this interesting, or am I just being a freak?

[zxcjason]

I have similar problem. I overclock my Duron 800 to 1GHz (FSB:124Mhz, PCI:31Mhz). Windows freezes after a while when I started, but I ran winbench overnight and the system could handle it. I also noticed that it only freezes when I was moving the mouse. When it freezes, it is inreponsive to mouse and keyboard, and I need to do a cold reboot. I suspect that my CPU can handle the speed and sth else is causing my system to freeze

My config:
Abit KT7a
Duron800 @ 1Ghz (124/31)
ASUS GEForce2 GTS 32M
SB16 (ISA)
INTEL PRO/100B NIC
ATI TVWonder
Symbios SCSI card
IBM 60GXP 40G HD

[Meridian]

USB or PS2 mouse and keyboard?

Check IRQs, and check DMA settings.

M

[jrg70]

ps2 mouse and keyboard.

My geforce 2 is on IRQ 5 with "ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering".

My NIC is on IRQ 10 with another instance of "ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering".

The SB LIve is on IRQ 11 with "HPT370 UDMA/ATA100 RAID Controller", "ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering", and "SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus".

I'm not using a RAID setup, should I disable the RAID controller? The lock ups are not bad. I think they are heat related. I've got a SK-6 on order and should have it any day now. Once I put that in I think it will help a lot. My temps under load get up to 58-60°C! I have upped the voltage to 1.775, I may need to go a bit more, but I wanted a better cooling solution before I go too far.

With better cooling and possibly more voltage to the CPU, I'm hoping that will do the trick.

[Meridian]

Yep, that is plenty hot enough to cause lockups. And yes, disable the RAID controller or move the SB from slot 5.

M

[jrg70]

With all the problems a SBLive can cause I'd like to put it on it's own IRQ. I have no need for COM ports or LPT. What is the best way to get the SBLive on it's own IRQ? The NIC and SBLive are the only cards I will be putting in the system. The SK-6 should be on my doorstep when I get home tonight, so my temps will hopefully be down after I install that.

[e3die]

Yeah, i know this lockups problem - i've played some mp3 , freeze, i hear music, but keyboard and mouse didn't respond
But i don't know any solutions

[jrg70]

I got the SK-6 installed and it lowered my temps a lot. I now average around 50°C under load. When the ambient temp is higher, my system temp gets higher and so does my load temp, but that's not surprising. I still get some lock ups occasionally. The funny thing is that the lock ups seem to happen when the system is not doing anything; when it's idle. I can stress the system and it handles it fine. I ran Hot CPU tester, CPU stability test, Prime95 and Folding@home simultaneously last night for about 3 hours and it came through fine, no problems. I ran Q3 for 8 hours at 1024 x 768 x 32bit, 11 bots set to Nightmare for over 7 hours and it was fine. I also have some problems with 3DMark 2001. Sometimes it will crash to the desktop. I run it again and it usually goes fine. I've noticed that if I run 3DMark 2001 right after the 2000 version, it will crash to desktop.
Anyway, what could be causing the lock ups when the computer is idle? And what could cause the problems with 3DMark 2001?

[Viceroy]

The best way to keep your SB Live and NIC from fighting is to put one in slot 2 and the other in slot 5. I have my NIC in 5 and SB in 2. Since I disabled ACPI (which shares w/5), and nothing is in slot 3 (which shares w/2), neither card shares resources with anything else. For the record: 4, 6, and USB controllers (if enabled in BIOS) all share with each other. PCI 1 shares with the AGP.

Originally posted by jrg70
With all the problems a SBLive can cause I'd like to put it on it's own IRQ. I have no need for COM ports or LPT. What is the best way to get the SBLive on it's own IRQ? The NIC and SBLive are the only cards I will be putting in the system. The SK-6 should be on my doorstep when I get home tonight, so my temps will hopefully be down after I install that.

[Meridian]

3DMark2001 crashing back to desktop usually means one thing - an overclock too far. Try thottling back about 20MHz (preferably by reducing the fsb) and seeing if the problems go away. If you get the problems at default my next guess is cr*ppy nVidia drivers.

And that IRQ share is probably a red herring - if the SB was causing problems they would be a lot more noticable. My SB used to share with my (NetGear FA311) NIC without problems. But you could try removing the SB anyway.

M

[Viceroy]

zxcjason, we both have Duron 800's. Mine is really happy running at 140/34 FSB x 7 (980 MHz). You will likely get better numbers in 3DMark, as well as game performance, with 980 MHz than the settings you tried, due to the high front-side bus speed. And, you might be more stable, too!

My system was able to hit 1060 MHz with 134/32 x 8, but it was noticeably less stable, and only made a difference of about 10 points in 3DMark2000. The only benchmark where 1060 MHz (w/134 FSB) beat out 980 MHz (w/140 FSB) was SiSoft Sandra's CPU-based tests. However, I'm not sure how much I trust Sandra for CPU tests, because it seems to be directly correlated to basic processor speed, and has less to do with real-world performance (like games), where FSB has a much more significant effect than increased multipliers.