Retriving Windows

I was doing some work there on Friday when all of a sudden my PC started playing up again it had been fine for about 3-4 weeks. After much teasing I guessed that I had a corrupt file in one of my registry file in the system folder. O tried running the repair option on the Windows installation disk but had no luck as some idiot (mainly me probably) was looking for an admin password that had never been set, I cant seem to be able to repair my windows platform using the installation CD. So my only resort was to install a new image of windows on a recently purchase drive (luckily that I had it).

Once install I booted up and copied across the relevant files but still my system was playing up, personally I think I might have some thing amiss with my RAM modules though the PC seems rather sensitive to my new USB card.

So I came across a site that give me the default setup to test systems and yes it worked fine for hoe long who knows. Oh if there’s ever a problem when updating the bios in that the error screen give you the message that the jumper connections must be set make sure that ever thing is properly grounded. This happen to me when I connected a hobo USB cable to the board and hence the reason why my bios need changing, once removed everything seemed to work fine.

The procedure I’ve posted below for future reference

Installation:

Upgrading the BIOS

One of the first things to do when you got the motherboard is upgrade the BIOS to the latest non-beta release, which is 1007. The proper way of doing this is by using a floppy drive as a startup disk. You’ll need to have access to a second computer to create the needed startup files, according to the following procedure.

- Download the latest 1007 BIOS and BIOS flash tool here: http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=A8N-SLI%20De...
- Download the BIOS and flash tool under the BIOS section of above mentioned URL.
- In Windows XP go to the floppy drive
- Format with using the option to create a MSDOS startup disk
- Once the disk is created unpack the 1007 BIOS and flash tool to the floppy
- Configure the motherboard with just the memory, processor and heatsink, video card and floppy drive
- Set the SLI selector card to ‘single card’
- Connect the power supply, including the 4-pin 12volt and 6-pin PCIe
- Hit ‘del’ once the system displays the boot screen
- Go to ‘Exit’ menu and select ‘Load Setup Default’
- Then ‘Exit & Save Changes’
- After the reboot the system will boot off the floppy
- Type ‘awdflash 1007.bin’ to start the BIOS update
- Select ‘No’ to save BIOS and ‘Yes’ to update BIOS
- Once completed press ‘F1’ to reset the system
- Power the system off and unplug the power supply from the mains

Configuring the BIOS:

Now connect all your devices and plug in all your other cards. Reconnect the mains to the power supply and power the system up. Press ‘del’ on your keyboard during bootup to get into the BIOS, in the ‘Main’ section first set the proper time, date and language.

Main

- Make sure all your discs and optical drives are listed
- Enabled HDD SMART monitoring

Advanced

CPU Configuration > DRAM configuration

- Max Memclock (MHz) : DDR400
- All other settings : Auto

If you know the exact timings for your memory modules you can obviously set those manually as well, by leaving these to Auto the motherboard will use the settings as stored in the module’s SPD, hence it should use the proper timings.

CPU Configuration

- Hyper Transport Frequency : 5x
- AMD K8 Cool ‘n’ Quiet control : Disabled

PCIPnP

- Plug & Play O/S : Yes
- Init Display First : PCIEx
- Resources Controlled By : Auto
- PCI/VGA Palette Snoop : Disabled

Onboard Device Configuration > IDE Function Setup

- All settings : Enabled

Onboard Device Configuration > NVRAID Configuration

- RAID Enable : disabled

Obviously you’d set this to ‘Enabled’ and select which disks you’d like to use if you have more than one harddisk you’d like to use with RAID. Keep in mind that RAID only makes sense with identical harddisks each on their own IDE or Serial-Ata channel.

Onboard Device Configuration > USB Configuration

- All settings : Enabled

Onboard Device Configuration

- Onboard NV LAN : Enabled
- Onboard LAN BOOT ROM : Disabled
- Onboard Marvell LAN : Disabled
- AC97 Audio : Disabled
- PCI IEEE 1394a : Disabled
- Silicon Image SATA Controller : Disabled
- Serial Port1 Address : Disabled
- Parallel Port Address : Disabled
- Game Port Address : Disabled
- Midi Port Address : Disabled

Disable all devices you don’t need or plan to use, this frees up extra IRQs and means there’s less device drivers to load creating less system overhead.

SLI Configuration

- EZ-Plug Warning : Enabled
- SLI mode : set to SLI for SLI, Normal for single video card

JumperFree Configuration

- Overclock Profile : Manual
- CPU Frequency : 200.0
- PCI Express Clock : 100MHz
- DDR Voltage : 2.70v
- CPU Multiplier : Auto
- CPU Voltage : Auto
- PCI Clock Sync : 33.33MHz

LAN Cable Status

- POST Check LAN Cable : Disabled

PEG Link Mode

- PEG Link Mode : Disabled
- PEG Root Control : Auto
- PEG Buffer Length : Auto

Speech Configuration

- Speech IC Reporter : Disabled

Instant Music

- Instant Music : Disabled

Power

- ACPI Suspend Type : S3
- ACPI APIC Support : Enabled

Power > APM Configuration

- Restore on AC Power Loss : Disabled
- PWR Button < 4 secs : Instant-Off
- All other settings : Disabled

Power > Hardware Monitor

- Q-Fan Controller : Disabled

Boot > Boot Settings Configuration

- Case Open Warning : Disabled
- Quick Boot : Enabled
- Boot up Floppy Seek : Disabled
- Bootup Num-Lock : On
- Typematic Rate Setting : Enabled
- Typematic Rate (Chars/Sec) : 30
- Typematic Delay (Msec) : 250
- OS Select For DRAM > 64MB : Non-OS2
- Full Screen LOGO : Disabled
- Halt On : All Errors

Now that the BIOS is set up properly exit and save the changes and let the machine reboot. We’d advice you to do a full install of Windows XP from a bootable Windows XP disk as outlined below.

Installing Windows XP

You can choose to install either Windows XP Home, Professional or Media Center Edition but we’d recommend you stick with Windows XP Professional. Install the operating system and device drivers according to the following sequence, make sure you already have SP2 on a CDR or different media so you can install that right after the installation of Windows XP completes. Do NOT install device drivers or other software before you have updated Windows XP with SP2. If you know how we’d recommend creating a slipstreamed bootable CD with Windows XP and SP2.

- Download SP2 here: http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/6/5/165b076b-aaa9-443d-84f0-73c...
- 02/05/2005 - Download NVIDIA chipset drivers ver 6.53 here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp2k_6.53
- Download NVIDIA ForceWare drivers ver 71.89 WHQL here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.89.html
- Install Windows XP Professional from the bootable CD
- Install SP2
- Install NVIDIA chipset drivers ver. 6.53
- Install NVIDIA Beta ForceWare drivers ver 71.89 WHQL

Once all of these device drivers have been installed you can proceed to install device drivers for any other components you might have. Keep in mind that if you want to make use of SLI the system will detect you have two video cards installed and ask for them to be set in SLI mode and reboot. Once the reboot is completed you need to manually enable multi-GPU rendering in the driver tab of the video card. To do that you need to enable ‘Show Advanced Settings’ in the Performance and Quality settings pane first and scroll down to ‘SLI rendering mode’.

If you're posting questions posted in the thread, be short, to the point and make sure you applied above BIOS settings first and have the drivers and software installed we listed. If not, we cannot help you. This thread will be strictly moderated to keep it as clean and informative as possible.

IT A BLOODY NIGHTMARE HAW HA HAW