Incompatible hardware

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This section is dedicated to listing various commonly used components that are known to have trouble with each other.

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Q: I have an Asus A7N8X motherboard, which is based on the NVIDIA nForce2 chipset. For some reason, my Crucial PC2700 DDR SDRAM that works with any other system, causes this system to freeze or generate errors. What's wrong?

A: This seems to be an incompatibility between Crucial's PC2700 DDR 512 MB DIMM and the nForce2-based boards. This is a fairly recent discovery, and most likely only affects certain revisions, as I have seen many folks using Asus nForce2 boards and Crucial PC2700 DDR SDRAM together just fine.

This problem is isolated to their 512 MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM DIMM. All other modules are just fine, which makes me believe that some voltage drops are occurring with this batch. Also, this seems to only occur when the PC2700 memory is run at 333 MHz speeds.

If you want to keep your Crucial memory and get it to work with your Asus / MSI nForce2 board, you may still be able to get it to work by slightly bumping up your memory voltage by 0.1 or 0.2 V, but this is a last resort, and by doing this, you agree to hold nobody responsible, except for yourself, for any consequences.

A better way is to contact Crucial directly, if you have Crucial part number CT6464Z335.16T.

You need to contact Crucial, or wherever you bought it from, and have them exchange it for part number CT6464Z335.K16TK or 16T3.

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Q: Why won't my system that uses motherboard with an AMD 761 chipset do a warm reboot after I tell it to restart? This happened after I had installed my Netgear FA311 PCI 10/100 ethernet card.

A: This is caused by a minor incompatibility between the AMD 761 chipset and the Netgear FA311 PCI 10/100 ethernet card. The card will still work just fine, in terms of connecting to the internet. The only problem is when you need to shut down and want a warm reboot. Not really a mission critical thing, since you can just hit the reset button instead.

However, if you don't like this, the 3Com cards, Linksys, DLink, and SMC ethernet cards do not have this problem with the AMD 761 chipset, neither does Netgear's other cards, such as their older FA310.

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Q: I can successfully install Windows 98, ME, or XP on my computer that uses:

Gigabyte GA-7DX motherboard
Western Digital 40 GB 7200 RPM hard drive

but when I try to install Windows 2000 Professional, I get the blue screen of death.


A: This is caused by an incompatibility between the Gigabyte GA-7DX (and its relatives, the DX+, DXR, and DXR+) and that particular Western Digital 40 GB hard drive. There is a workaround for the installation bug:

Use Western Digital's drive utility software, and set your drive to run in ATA-66 mode. Now you can install Windows 2000, and after the installation is complete, you can set your drive back to ATA-100 mode.

Alternatively, you may use a normal EIDE cable (not ATA-66/100) to install the operating system, since this will force your drive to operate in Ultra ATA-33 mode.

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Q: I have a Leadtek GF2Ti 64MB Graphics card combined with an Abit Kt7 / kt7 RAID motherboard and receive poorer fps than I'd expect

A: Unfortunately, there's a problem running the 2 together. I had the same problem, and no amount of driver updates, BIOS updates or VIA updates solved the problem. I've also heard of others running the same line of cards and mobos together and having problems... [DW]Mimi has an XP1800, 512 megs or ram, leadtek GF4 and an Abit mobo and gets slightly worse performance than my PC - a XP1600 / 256 / GF2Ti - I have less cooling too. Abit mobos are good, leadtek cards are good, but I doubt I'd risk the 2 together. Could just be coincidence or isolated incidents, but I know I wouldn't chance it.

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Q: I am currently using a motherboard based on the nForce2 chipset, and am using a Simple Technologies' PC2700 512 MB DDR SDRAM DIMM in it. I am experiencing memory errors when trying to use a 333 MHz FSB speed.

A: Just as mentioned above, the Simple Technologies' budget (generic) RAM has some difficulties with the nForce2-based motherboards. It seems that the Asus A7N8X board is especially susceptible to errors when using this memory.

Simple Technologies has acknowledged that their budget RAM may very well have problems with the aggressive nForce2 chipset. Their premium line of RAM does not have this problem, though.

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Q: I am currently using a motherboard based on an Nvidia nForce chipset and using the onboard IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port. When I try to transfer files to or from my Creative Nomad Jukebox 3/Zen I experience very slow speeds.

A: It has been discovered that the onboard audio occupies the same IRQ as the IEEE 1394 (Firewire) controller. Although there is no current fix, one solution is to disable the onboard audio to see if your speeds increase. If you are using another audio card and are experiencing slow speeds make sure your onboard audio is disabled.

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Q: My hard drive is only being recognized as a 32 GB hard drive, even though I know, for sure, that it is a 60 GB hard drive. What happened?

A: There are two possibilities here. One is that your motherboard's BIOS is incapable of recognizing large sized hard drives. Go to your motherboard manufacturer's web site, and look at the BIOS files for your particular model, and their descriptions. Flash your BIOS according to the manufacturer's instructions.

The other possibility is due to a limitation in the FAT32 filing system used with the older versions of Windows. Any version of FDISK.EXE up to Windows 98 SE, has this bug, and you can download the upgraded version from Microsoft's website, if you are running one of the older versions of Windows.

In Windows ME, FDISK.EXE is not susceptible to this.

In Windows 2000 Professional and XP, you are MUCH better off using NTFS, not FAT32, for these larger drives.

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Q: My system is based on an ECS K7S5A motherboard, and no matter what I try, I cannot get the EIDE controller working fully.

I am using a Netgear FA311 PCI ethernet card.

A: The Netgear FA311 PCI ethernet card is incompatible with the ECS K7S5A motherboard. This card has problems with the SiS 735 Northbridge and Southbridge. Get a different brand, such as 3Com (my personal recommendation), SMC, Linksys, or DLink.

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Q: I am trying to use a Chaintech GeForce4 Ti4200 8X AGP video card in combination with my Epox EP-8RDA+ motherboard (nForce2 chipset). I know the card is perfectly good, since it worked with other motherboards, but it won't work with this one. I know the motherboard is OK as well, since it was working fine with a different card.

A: Some of the early Chaintech GeForce4 Ti4200 graphics cards using the 8X AGP interface will experience troubles with this particular motherboard. I am not certain about which revisions at this time, though.

The 4X AGP version of that card does not have this problem with this particular motherboard, and the later versions of the 8X AGP cards are also fine.

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Q: I have a Creative Nomad Muvo, and it works fine with other computers, but I cannot get it to work with my system, which uses a nForce / nForce2 motherboard, and running Windows XP.

A: Creative Labs has released a firmware that corrects this problem:

http://www.americas.creative.com/support/files/download2.asp?centric=240&maincat=10&os=10&subcat=38

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Q: I have an old Voodoo 3 3000 AGP video card, and am trying to get it to work with an older motherboard, and everytime I try this, I keep getting errors / Blue Screens of Death. I know the motherboard is good, and I know that the video card is good, but they just won't work together. What is going on here?

A: The Voodoo 3 3000 video card was one of the most power-hungry video cards of its time. Many popular motherboards, such as Gigabyte's GA-6BXC and FIC's PA2013, were incapable of providing enough juice for this video card.

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Q: I have a motherboard based on a VIA KT400 chipset, and it has been running smoothly with an older GeForce2 video card. However, when I tried to use an ATi Radeon 9700, I keep getting system crashes, and terrible stability. I know all of the components are good, since I've used them in other systems as well.

A: The VIA KT400 came out before the Radeon 9700 video cards did, and thus did not anticipate the demands of these cards. These video cards are quite power-hungry, and the motherboard has troubles supplying enough juice to the AGP slot.

One solution that has worked for some, is to increase the AGP voltage by 0.1V, which seems to help the stability issue. Some have needed more than that. If you choose to do this, please do this in conservative increments, and watch carefully for overheating.

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Q: I have a Soundblaster Live! that screws up my system. The card works fine in any other system that doesn't use a VIA or ALi chipset, but it messes up my files transfers. Why does this happen, and what can be done about it?

A: This is a problem with motherboards that use the VIA 686B Southbridge (IDE controller) and a VIA Northbridge, in combination with a Soundblaster Live! sound card. If all three components are present, then the problem can occur where you will get data transfer failures when transferring large sized files (must be greater than 50 MB).

There are some solutions here:

1) Install the latest VIA 4-in-1 Hyperion drivers. This should fix the compatibility issue.

or

2) Remove the Soundblaster Live! sound card from your system.

This problem shouldn't be present when using the more modern VIA chipsets.

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Q: None of the devices on my AMD K6-based motherboard that uses a VIA VP3 / MVP3 / MVP4 chipset are working! These devices are good in other computers but not this one.

A: With most operating systems, these boards require that you install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers, or at least the PCI IRQ miniport patch.

You might need to do this with any system that uses a VIA chipset, especially if you have an older operating system, and a newer motherboard.

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Q: I have a Plantronics DSP500 USB-based headset and a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card. Are there any compatibility issues between them?

A: When using one of the 16/32 bit hybrid Windows (98, 98 SE, ME), some people have encountered the blue screen of death when attempting to use both at the same time. At this time, there are no real fixes, other than to use a better operating system, or use one or the other.

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Q: I am trying to use a GeForce4 Ti4600 video card with an AMD 761-based motherboard, and keep getting blank screen problems, where it never "wakes up" out of such a state. What's happening, and what can be done to fix it?

A: This is caused between an slight incompatibility between those specific brands of GeForce4 Ti4600 video cards, and the implementation of fast writes on certain AMD 761 boards.

Disable fast writes; this setting really doesn't have any significant effects on performance anyways.

Also, uninstall NVIEW.

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Q: I have an Intel 845 (or later) chipset on my motherboard. I wanted to use my older video cards, but they won't work with them.

A: All of Intel's recent motherboards can now only take a 1.5V AGP video card. If you have an older card, such as a RIVA TNT / TNT2 (not ultra) / Voodoo3 2000 / 3000 etc., you will not be able to use it with these boards, or any board that cannot use a 3.3V video card.

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Q: I've been trying to run Windows NT 4.0 on my system that is using an ABIT BP6 motherboard, with an Adaptec 2940UW or U2W, but I always get to a blue screen of death. What can I do to get the system working?

A: Make sure that you have at least Service Pack 5 installed, or better yet, get rid of Windows NT 4.0. Windows 2000 and later automatically takes care of the problem mentioned above, and works much better with larger sized hard drives.

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Q: I have a motherboard based on a VIA chipset (KT333 or later), and it doesn't seem to want to cooperate with my ATi Radeon 9500 (or later) video card. Are there any quick fixes here?

A: As always, first try the latest VIA Hyperion 4 in 1 drivers.

http://downloads.viaarena.com/drivers/4in1/VIA_Hyperion%204IN1_V451v.zip

Also, make sure that your motherboard has the latest BIOS flashed.

If that doesn't work, then go into your motherboard's BIOS, and manually force it to use AGP 4X mode.

While none of the above are going to guarantee success, there's still a chance that you can get a stable, working system, and the forcing of the AGP 4X mode seems to be the most successful method.