Biostar M7NCG 400

On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 04:36:17 GMT, "John H."
<JohnH RemoveThis @reply-to-group.thanks> wrote:

 >I just built a system using this mb and have problems with XP crashing.
 >Anyone have experience with this board? I'm using the built in
 >audio/video/lan (NVidia NForce 2) and have installed the latest drivers and
 >bios update.
 >

I have one sitting a few feet from me, works fine except
that I pulled the CPU out a couple days ago.

When exactly does it crash, any pattern to it?

If you're using a relatively high speed Athlon XP in it, you
may need a fairly strong power supply, as it'll have a lot
of load on the 5V rail. if it's a generic PSU and/or rated
at less than 180-200W combined 3V+5V output, you might try
another power supply, though taking voltage readings with a
multimeter first might be telling.

Does "latest drivers" include the nVidia reference chipset
driver, not just the one offered by Biostar (which is
usually older)?

With any nForce2-IGP board, and especially those from
"budget" manufacturers like Biostar, you might find it a bit
more picky about memory. Have you ran
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.memtest86.com" target="_blank">http://www.memtest86.com</a> for several hours to test the
memory? Mine has an odd bug in that it's more stable at
CAS2.5 than CAS3, even with some generic modules I tried
that were rated only CAS3. It seems to be a bios bug, but
the problem was evident with both original shipping and most
current bios revisions. In other words, if your memory is
CAS3, board bios is set to use "auto" values, and you get
memtest86 errors, try manually setting CAS2.5, but be sure
to retest with memtest86 if you do that.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->