Bad experience. HELP NEEDED ASAP.

[Joe Right]

I had a bad experience with a PC Chips K-7 Motherboard. Don't get one. I had a surge protector on my computer and ever since the power went out the other day I have had nothing but problems. I get a BSD that says BAD_POOL_DATA and PAGE_FAULT_IN_NO_PAGE_AREA. I also get errors with no description. I gues I will have to get a new one this weekend. Well, actually I have a good 939 socket motherboard but all my devices are IDE and the board has SATA. I will have to buy new hard drives, memory, and a cpu if I decide to go this route. I need some suggestions. Please help me.

[CoastPC]

As you say, the board may be damaged but, Do you have a spare power supply laying around? Try replacing the power supply first. Mayby it got damaged with the surge.

Chris

[Hope]

Joe, you have my sympathy. A couple of years back I had the same problem. I replaced my power supply, mother board, ram, hard drive and the same problems. It turned out to be my CPU that was bad. The good side of it, I got a brand new machine by the time I was done.

[SensoVision]

Hi Joe! I was on K7 for many years and have no issues with this CPU(I was using VIA® KT880 first from Albatron, Soltek and later from Asus and I've got feeling that brand really make a difference...), so guess that there is possibility like Heidi mentioned, that problem could be in different part of your system.
I thought that all motherboards have IDE channels for compatibility with IDE devices, are you sure that your motherboard doesn't?

I need some suggestions.

can explain a bit of what kind of suggestions you're looking for, I'm sure that people would be glad to share their expriences or give suggestions if know more about what you're looking for.

Almost forgot, I'm with Chris about starting from good power supply, without it any system could have various kind of problems which would make you blame other devices which simply can't get reliable power...

[Joe Right]

Sure, I have noticed that the other board I have does have IDE but only one. Which is probably for my CD and DVD burners. All the rest of it is SATA. Although if i use this motherboard i will have to get an intel chip.

Heres what it looks like. This is the new on I have.


The one I am currently using is a PC CHIPS K-7. It has a mobile AMD 2800+ and, it runs at 2ghz. It has 400mhz DDR RAM.

If I use this new board what will I have to get as far as CPU and RAM is concerned?
Also is there anything i can do to test if my AMD processor is bad.
By the way. My K-7 board starts up just fine. Although sometimes it tells me that the CMOS battery is low. I replaced it with a brand new one and it tells me the same every once in a while. I can get it to boot from a winXP cd but after the drivers are loaded and it starts the windows setup (GUI) then it gives me the errors I was talking about. Could it be my memory, CPU, or power supply as you had suggested?

[Joe Right]

Well, I bought new ram yesterday. I changed out the old. I still get an error when it tries to load the windows setup(gui). Do you think it could be my processor. If so does AMD have a warranty policy? Can I turn it in for a new one? I a haven't tried to see if it is the power supply yet. I seriously dought its the power supply. It wouldn't work if it was. It could be the motherboard I think. Please help some more.

[SensoVision]

Hi Joe!
since changing RAM isn't help I would suspect CPU and motherboard just like you were suspecting. But I'll make your task harder... I've read a bit about errors you've mentioned and it seems that they could be caused by conflict of video card drivers or other devices and motherboard. Maybe you've added some devices lately or updated some driver after which you've spotted this error?
As for warranty AMD seems to have limited type one, so if you have box CPU you'll have AMD warranty and if not, you'll have to contact shop where you bought it. Here is link for warranty: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_867,00.html

BTW not sure like there, but if my hardware start failing I usually go to shop where I bought it tell about problem and usually I can give it for warranty repair service which is slow process or I can immediately upgrade for another device and warranty issues would be handled by shop itself, very handy I should say.

Sorry I wasn't much help yet, but hopefully with time we'll discover what really causing such error.

Also did you consider booting from some Linux CD, if you have one maybe you can boot and attach this file
/var/log/syslog (it may have some information about devices which fails if it's really hardware problem).

[Andy]

I would always go to a local shop. I posted before about how a hard disk I bought didn't work. 24 hours later the computer was back with us fully tested and free of charge with a replacement disk.

Now my son's mail-order PC hard disk failed and we have to wait 3-6 weeks to get it back from the repair centre on the other side of the country. If time is money you have no choice but to use a local company for your PC needs.

[Joe Right]

Hi Joe!
since changing RAM isn't help I would suspect CPU and motherboard just like you were suspecting. But I'll make your task harder... I've read a bit about errors you've mentioned and it seems that they could be caused by conflict of video card drivers or other devices and motherboard. Maybe you've added some devices lately or updated some driver after which you've spotted this error?
As for warranty AMD seems to have limited type one, so if you have box CPU you'll have AMD warranty and if not, you'll have to contact shop where you bought it. Here is link for warranty: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_867,00.html

BTW not sure like there, but if my hardware start failing I usually go to shop where I bought it tell about problem and usually I can give it for warranty repair service which is slow process or I can immediately upgrade for another device and warranty issues would be handled by shop itself, very handy I should say.

Sorry I wasn't much help yet, but hopefully with time we'll discover what really causing such error.

Also did you consider booting from some Linux CD, if you have one maybe you can boot and attach this file
/var/log/syslog (it may have some information about devices which fails if it's really hardware problem).

I would always go to a local shop. I posted before about how a hard disk I bought didn't work. 24 hours later the computer was back with us fully tested and free of charge with a replacement disk.

Now my son's mail-order PC hard disk failed and we have to wait 3-6 weeks to get it back from the repair centre on the other side of the country. If time is money you have no choice but to use a local company for your PC needs.

Thanks guys. I'll check it out this weekend. I'll probably end up giong to PC Shop were I purchased It.
Well anyway, This sucks. I don't have a computer right now so I am having to do all my stuff either at my grand parents house or at the college. Which gives me limited resources because I don't have Photoshop CS2, Dreamweaver8, or Flash8. These are the progs. I primarily like to use. Darn Darn, Darn I WANT MY COMPUTER BACK!

[Andy]

Everything's breaking now! Yesterday the legs on the swivel chair I use for computing broke sending me rolling across the floor. But I have a new one since it was only 3 months old and 1 year warranty.

Joe - hope you get things sorted quick. I can't imagine how I would cope without computer access. It's like being without food/water. I always recommend as many computers as you can afford in a house, all networked with broadband internet.  At least N + 1 where N is the number of people in the home.

[Hope]

I always recommend as many computers as you can afford in a house, all networked with broadband internet.  At least N + 1 where N is the number of people in the home.

You are being a bit concervative there. What happens if two computers go at once?

[Andy]

What happens if two computers go at once?

there is still 3 left 

[design1]

Just hearing PC Chips name sends chills of horror down my spine.. i feel your pain..