Random Restarts, Then Error Loading OS, HDD Boot Order

Wavey

Morning all,
I have a Gigabyte GA-K8N Sli Motherboard.
When ever I leave the pc on overnight downloading, and come back to it, it is trying to restart and is stuck on an "Error Loadin OS" error.

I have figured out how to temporarily solve it:

Basically what happening is the Hard disk boot priority in the bios is changing so the the 1st choice is a sata hdd that dosent have an OS and the 2nd choice is my OS Drive (IDE).
If I make the OS drive 1st choice, the pc starts fine.

My BIOS is up to date.

Why does it keep changing back to the SATA for the 1st boot choice?

Can anyone help?

Thanks,
Wavey.

8T8

Well some suggestions I would try are;

Test system RAM with memtest+

Clear the motherboards CMOS (this isn't often done after a bios flash in order to avoid having to setup the bios again but can cause problems on some systems)

Do you have RAID enabled on the NV SATA controller, if not using it try disabling the feature.

Try replacing battery for bios.

Run the diagnostic software that is available for your hard drives, usually found the HD makers website just in case a faulty HD is the cause.

Have you tried contacting Gigabyte support not that it may help but on the off chance the know the cause of the problem.

Take a look at the event log in administrative tools to see if the error that reboots the computer is flagged.

Cuddlesworth

Lol, this is an easy one. The n-force 4 chipset fire-wall cause's memory leakage issues with certain download programs mainly bit-torrent ones. And turning it off doesnt help. You need to un-install it.

8T8

Possibly but it doesn't explain the change of the boot procedure in the bios. If it does that's the first I've heard of it do you have any more info on this krazy_8s.

NVIDIA silently disabled or scaled back I suppose is a better term the TCP offloading feature if you install any of the recent chipset drivers on the nForce 4 because of data corruption. The NV firewall has it's own issues as well but it should be okay if you disable the TCP offloading feature Wavey that's assuming you are actually using the NVIDIA Active Armour firewall.

KdjaCL

Nforce drivers gave me a lot of grief so i dont use them.

Install anew clean clean windows run windows update and dont install Forceware, install each item direct from the drivers file by browsing to the other windows on a different HD they in C:Nvidia.

I had mega blue screens of death now just dont use forceware at all.


kdjac

Wavey

Cheers for the replies lads,
Yes its usually, if not always, when I leave Azureus running that the crash occurs.

8T8, How can I access this TCP offloading feature?

Wavey

Kd,
Which drivers u refering to?

Chipset?


Can I just uninstall those without reformatting?

Thanks.

KdjaCL

The chipset drivers Wavey they gave me a lot of crap , had to stop using them. pain to try workaround getting each device to install.

That and the firewall and active armour and the other crap thing that installs.

Wouldnt let me uninstall them as they were hardware and when i did they just went back to using them.

Could try unchecking everything Nvidia related in MSconfig and see if the error occurs then.


kdjac

8T8

Wavey are you actually using the NVIDIA firewall feature it is often referred to as active armour or the network access manager (NAM) ?

If so you can find it in the interface of the firewall sorry can't recall the specific location though it is probably under some advanced setting. If you install the NAM found in the 6.70 drivers it should cure the problem as TCP offloading is disabled in the NAM with these.

If you want a clean setup the only NVIDIA driver you need to install is the SM Bus one & ethernet, the storage (if not using RAID) & audio are optional. When installing the ethernet driver it will prompt you about the NAM say no you don't want to use it and it will just install the ethernet driver.

If you have installed the NAM & want to ditch it, it can be removed via the add/remove in the control panel look for a reference to the Forceware Network Access Manager or simply uninstall the whole NV driver package then re-install with the one above but only picking the parts I mentioned to install.

Cuddlesworth

8T8 wrote:

Possibly but it doesn't explain the change of the boot procedure in the bios. If it does that's the first I've heard of it do you have any more info on this krazy_8s.

NVIDIA silently disabled or scaled back I suppose is a better term the TCP offloading feature if you install any of the recent chipset drivers on the nForce 4 because of data corruption. The NV firewall has it's own issues as well but it should be okay if you disable the TCP offloading feature Wavey that's assuming you are actually using the NVIDIA Active Armour firewall.

I dont know about the boot cahnging procedure no, but if he can solve the crashing problem then this will not affect him. I had the same problem with a Asus, Dfi and Abit board. To solve I went into add remove programs and un-installed it. And it doesnt matter if it is on as it still causes the pc to crash just by being there.

Its the first thing you see in the U-torrent faq.

http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#Help.21_My.C2.B5Torrent_process_is_using_a_ton_of_memory.21