GA-890GPA-UD3H instability problems

[Kitts]

Just made a new PC at the end of March and it has been unstable from the get-go. Gradually I have eliminated several problems, like the HIS Radeon video card booting too slowly and crashing the PC, and replaced it with an Nvidia 250 GT video card.

But I am left with a core problem.
On first boot of the day, or one longer than 2 hours since the last cold boot, I get complete instability with cascading program crashes culminating in either a BSOD or a Black screen. It will continue to reboot and crash if I let it.

Now I fire it up, then turn it off for 30 seconds and restart it. It is now as stable as I could want, playing Mass Effect 1 or 2 with no problems for as long as I want, say 10 hours continual use.

Twice now I have had the error on the BSOD saying "not APCI compatible.." but other errors don't give me a clue as to what is happening. All I have worked out, which is obvious, is that on 2nd boot Win 7 sees the problem the first time around and avoids it for the 2nd boot.

I also cannot seem to get DXdiag.exe to run at all... I am new to using Win 7 Pro as I have used XP Pro for years till I moved to Win 7 in the hope it could cure the problems with my new PC, so not even sure what version of DX I should be using as the video card is not DX 11 compliant. Currently using DX 9c.

Specs of my PC are,

Antec Basiq 550 watt 3 x 12v rails PSU
Motherboard – Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H
AMD Phenom 2 x4 965 processor, 3.40 Ghz
2 x 2 gig DDR3 ram G-Skill - yeah I now know it has issues with this mobo.
Nvidia GT 250 1 gig video card
My old Sound Blaster Audigy 2 sound card.

Bios version says F3 dated Feb 8th 2010
Running Win 7 Pro with current updates.

I would flash the Bios but all I have read online about doing that seems that folk are talking about Rev 1 or 2 Bios and all I have is F3... ??

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[absic]

Hi there,

I would flash the Bios but all I have read online about doing that seems that folk are talking about Rev 1 or 2 Bios and all I have is F3... ??

Updating BIOS would be my first step in resolving these kind of issues. In the above quote the people who are talking about Rev 1 or 2 are discussing the revision number of the Motherboard NOT the BIOS version. It is important that you download the correct BIOS for your Mobo. You can find the Revision number normally on the bottom left corner of your board.

You say that you are currently running F3 BIOS and, looking at the 2 revisions for this board I believe you are running the Rev 1.0. If this is correct you can download the latest BIOS from here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3342#dl BUT please double check that your board is the Rev 1.0 before using this link. (If it is Rev 2.0 then you can get the BIOS via this link: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3420#dl )

If you are not sure how to Flash BIOS you might want to check out this thread: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2084.msg9510.html#msg9510
Hope this helps

[venganza]

I also cannot seem to get DXdiag.exe to run at all...

 Currently using DX 9c.

Hrmm... I find this odd, how are you managing to use DX9 in Win7?

I am assuming you installed DX9 "runtimes" which is fine, but please don't tell me you managed to install anything else

[bofh1971]

Hi There

The black/screen BSOD problem seems to occur quite a bit lately , I had the issue myself.
People seem to find different solutions to the problem

Some update the bios,
Others change the Ram, I have seen quite a lot of G-Skill users switch to something else.

in my case however it was my audio drivers,
I use the onboard card,, and I noticed you have an Audigy, did you disable onboard audio in your bios? or has it loaded drivers for it (which can cause BSOD if not the latest ones)

whats the status of Audigy cards on windows 7 now too? there were loads of problems reported a few months back.

Good luck getting it sorted

[venganza]

Hi There

whats the status of Audigy cards on windows 7 now too? there were loads of problems reported a few months back.

Good luck getting it sorted

I use an Audigy 4 on one of my machines, and it is perfect.

I had a friend visit me only today, and we actually spoke about Creative Pacific, he has the Audigy 2 and reported a lot of issues, seems his card chews up a massive amount of CPU time on some operations, even though the features/drivers are supposed to rectify this.

[Kitts]

absic115 - Running the free scan of BiosAgentPlus it says
BIOS Type: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
BIOS ID:  02/08/2010-RS880D-SB850-7A66BG0CC-00
the chipset is AMD 9601 rev 0

From Win7 System info it says - BIOS Version/Date  Award Software International, Inc. F3, 2/8/2010

I did set the timing of my memory to Manual, and it is set to the amounts it says it should be..

So is it Revision 1 then?
-----------
Venganza-  Yep, Onboard Audio is disabled and as far as I know, I have the latest drivers. I used Creative's auto scan for device drivers. Only problem I have noticed is the sound is low but this could be due to the cheap stereo speakers I am using. I need a transformer to let me use my UK 4 speakers & sub woofer Creative Labs speakers.

DX 9c? Um, I installed it? It also installed from Mass Effect I believe. but although Dxdiag.exe is in a folder within Windows it won't run for me.. I used to use Dxdiag to get the system info for my pc before moving to Win 7 Pro.I installed it from the dx site, file is called directx_feb2010_redist.exe.

I really, really do not want to change my memory. I don't have the spare cash to do so at this time.
Thanks  for the suggestions and links, guys. Hope my replies shed a little more light on my problem.

[absic]

Hi

So is it Revision 1 then?

Sorry if I didn't make it clear. You need to look at your motherboard (the revision number is on one of the edges usually towards the bottom left corner). This is the Revision number that you need it is not a BIOS revision number. Double check your Motherboard to find the revision number though, before downloading new BIOS as there are 2 versions of your motherboard, Rev 1.0 and Rev 2.0

Your BIOS version is F3. If your Motherboard is Rev 1.0 then latest BIOS is F7C and you can download from link in earlier post.

Hope this makes it clearer.

[venganza]

absic115 directx_feb2010_redist.exe.

Ah ok that is just DX9 runtime files, that is fine

[Kitts]

Hi

So is it Revision 1 then?

Sorry if I didn't make it clear. You need to look at your motherboard (the revision number is on one of the edges usually towards the bottom left corner). This is the Revision number that you need it is not a BIOS revision number. Double check your Motherboard to find the revision number though, before downloading new BIOS as there are 2 versions of your motherboard, Rev 1.0 and Rev 2.0

Your BIOS version is F3. If your Motherboard is Rev 1.0 then latest BIOS is F7C and you can download from link in earlier post.

Hope this makes it clearer.

Ah, got it. However, it said that V7c was an error, but did allow me to install v6 when that failed. I did go to the sites you Linked for me. Your instructions were great but to be sure I also looked here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCCId1Mcrw4&annotation_id=annotation_219675&feature=iv where the guy has a 3 part video of actually using Qflash.

Hopefully my problems are now fixed, but I won't be able to tell till tomorrow am as I can restart the PC as many times as I want, even cold boots, but unless it is off for more than 2 hours, the error doesn't reappear. Seems that whatever Windows does to correct it stays in some part of the memory for at least 2 hours, but 6-8 hours or more and the "fix" it uses is gone and the error is back.

Will Post tomorrow and let you know how boot up goes. Thanks again, absic115.

[venganza]

Ok let us know, if it looks serious or not fixed, I can maybe rustle up some more "pro" help from some of my pals

[Kitts]

Not fixed.   However starting this morning didn't kill off Avast. Usually Avast is damaged each morning to the point I have to uninstall and reinstall it. Windows Defender still  starts up with a message it couldn't start though.

Any help gratefully received.

[venganza]

Not fixed.   However starting this morning didn't kill off Avast. Usually Avast is damaged each morning to the point I have to uninstall and reinstall it. Windows Defender still  starts up with a message it couldn't start though.

Any help gratefully received.

Can't you just clean-install the thing, takes me an hour tops to get it back to where it was (without any backup and just reinstalling apps)... Thanks god for Firefox & Mozbackup is all I can say

[bofh1971]

this is starting to look like bad data is being written to the hard disks at shutdown
usually this is due to bad Ram.
had it happend on a couple of builds
strange thing was it only happened when the system was shutdown - off, and not when just rebooted.

Change of ram did fix it though

[Kitts]

Well today it wanted to go the whole 9 yards with Repair System as it said it could not start the PC. Was working fine last night as I watched olsd episodes of BONES. Finally told it to boot from CD and it started normally with internet and all - am using it now - but Avast not working or Windows Defender. I had expected it to go into the Win Install stuff but it didn't. Confusing

As for memory, I ran the Memtest86 program and it tested all good.

[Dark Mantis]

It sounds like a failing hard drive to me. Have you checked the SMART option in the BIOS? Also you could try running one of the HDD checking programs to get an insight on the state of the drive.