MSI K8N Neo4 Plat/X2 4400 finally stable!

Hey all,

I post this more for informational purposes, in case anyone else runs across
the same thing. I solved my stability problems by getting rid of the Nvidia
IDE SW driver.

Couple of months ago, I did a new system build .
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum mb
Athlon X2 4400+ processor
2 gb Corsair XMS LL ddr ram ( 2ea 1gb) running in dual channel
Saphire Radeon X850XT 256 mb PCIe video card
2 ea WD 250 gb Sata hard drives
SB Audigy2 ZS soundcard

Some of you may recall, I was getting system lockups fairly frequently. I
first suspected it might be my power supply, as it was a 20 pin plugged into
a 24 pin connector ( however, according to the msi manual, this should be
fine). I know it is an Antec True Power, over 500 watt. Several of you
responded that it was not likely the power supply.

I had all my hardware drivers current. I would not get any errors reported
in event viewer. I would be working along, when all of a sudden the system
would just lock up, and I would have to power off holding the power switch
in for the required 5 seconds or so. Oftentimes, upon booting back up,
chkdsk would run. Interestingly, the lockups would usually happen while
using OE reading newsgroups, Outlook reading emails, or Firefox or IE
viewing webpages. It never did freeze up on me playing games, though I do
much more of the previous than the latter.

I knew it was not a heat problem, as my cpu and system temps remained pretty
low.

I had also downloaded and installed the latest Nvidia Nforce mb drivers from
Nvidia, with the same result. I had installed the Nvidia IDE SW drivers from
the get go, both with the mb driver cd originally, and with the Nvidia
Nforce drivers from Nvidia's website.

Well, earlier this week, I uninstalled the Nvidia Nforce mb drivers
completely. I then used Driver Cleaner Pro to remove any remnants of Nforce
drivers. I re-installed the Nforce drivers, except this time, I elected to
NOT install the Nvidia IDE SW driver. I had noticed, in one of the Windows
XP forums, a couple of folks had reported lockups while browsing the web,
that they attributed to this Nvidia IDE SW driver, that went away when they
got rid of it, so I thought I would give it a try...

Voila, problem appears to be solved! System is now rock solid and stable!
Finally!! I am one happy camper!

For whatever reason, on my system, that Nvidia IDE SW driver created
problems! My system would freeze, almost daily, at least once. I got rid of
it, and now, it is happily purring along...

Hopefully, this may help someone else that happens to run into the same
issue...



--
Don Burnette