ASUS P5W-DH: Pulling My Hair Out

[Absolute_0]

This board was good to me at first but recently it's been going downhill fast.

First couple weeks it worked excellent, nothing wrong.

When i put a Pentium D 950 in, it started acting crazy. SP2004 Large FFTs would fail at stock speeds, when overclocked past 250 FSB it went insane. CSS ran at double speed, programs crashed even if it was priming, but usually prime crashed instantly. This is with plenty of volts.

It randomly restarted and those problems went away, and i went on to get a normal overclock of 4.4 Ghz 24/7 stable on it.

Then it went back on the fritz. My CD rom drives stopped showing up in windows. I played with the IDE settings for hours, nothing. After reading some Microsoft guides, it seemed that the registry was messed up, i tried to fix that, but to no avail. The next time i restarted i lost my mouse.
So i'm stuck at the computer with no working CD rom drives and the mouse isn't working.

I took my hard drive out and put it in my AMD system and attempted to repair the installation. No good, it would reboot infinitely without finishing. Put it in another computer: same thing. So i reinstalled XP and "kept the file system intact." And then put the hard drive back in my ASUS P5W.

Messed with it for another hour, USB keyboard/mouse would work in the BIOS, but upon entering windows the keyboard would cease working and the mouse would go dead. Eventually it started working.

Back in windows, repaired installation, still no CD rom drives, but at least my mouse is working. I started messing with the CD Rom drives again and found i could get the BIOS to recognize my DVD burner! But only sometimes... i could restart and then it wouldn't be listed in the BIOS. It's that retarded. So i flashed the BIOS. Go back into windows... no CD Rom drives.

Back to BIOS, tell it to boot from CD. It finds my DVD burner, starts booting up the Windows XP installation. I mean to do a full format this time. It starts reading from the CD, goes for like 3 minutes collecting files, and then BSODs. I attempt again about 4 times, BSOD everytime.

Use the computer for an hour, decide to OC back up to 4.4 Ghz. Go into the BIOS and the Vcore options are gone. Whatever, use teh computer normally and it says i have 30 days to activate windows. Restart, says i need to activate now.


Let me recap those problems
1) Problems with Memory & Large FFTs @ stock
2) FSB problems past 250 FSB that magically fixed itself
3) CD Rom drives will show up in the BIOS sometimes, sometimes not at all, and never in windows
4) USB would work, and then not work when i got into windows, magically fixed itself eventually
5) Did a 100% proper BIOS Flash (i've done it like 6 times now) and STILL it took away my Vcore options
6) I can't even reformat it because it BSODs a few minutes into reading off the Windows XP disk


I used to recommend this board, but my day has been hell.
HELL.

Stay away.

Edit: Maybe i'm just unlucky so don't base your buying decisions off this completely, when the board is working right (and it WAS working right) it's a damn fine board, but i've had TOO many separate issues with it to be able to recommend it anymore.

[ZX7891]

This may be off topic, but the EXACT same thing happened to me with an Asus P5LD2, CSS running too fast, IDE ports dying, diminishing overclock over time, not being stable whatsoever.

[Absolute_0]

CSS run at double speed for you? I mean like, unload teh AK47 clip in 1.5 seconds? Run across Dust2 in 4 seconds, lol...

Seems like my IDE is dead. Yeah sounds like the same thing... did you RMA the board? I sent a query to ASUS asking for an RMA number, i'm not wasting any more time on the board. I already spent the entire day working on it, literally like 8 hours.

[n00b 0f l337]

Did you ever try a different cpu?

[Absolute_0]

Had a Celeron in before the 950D... tested both on my friend's rig, both are good.

Motherboard is ing retarded. I am seriously taking a break from overclocking for a while. I'm just done.

[Absolute_0]

I RMAd it to Newegg. I feel so relieved, that board was driving me crazy...

The board is sweet when it's working right, but from what i've read there's a lot of defective ones... quality control ASUS!!

[[XC] moddolicous]

I know this may sound retarded, but look at the caps on the board. If they are slighly bulged at all, then they need to be replaced. Heres a website with more info:
http://www.badcaps.net/forum/

[Absolute_0]

Sorry for the resurrection, but...

A while ago i advised my friend to buy a P5WDH Deluxe. He's been running that for the last couple months with my old Celeron 326.

Today i go to upgrade the Celleron to a Conroe like he wanted.

After upgrading, it WILL NOT BOOT. I go back to the Celeron, WILL NOT BOOT. The BIOS was successfully flashed to 0078 previously.

Now i go to ing upgrade it and it turns into a vegetable.

I'll say it again: ASUS P5WDH Deluxe: pulling my hair out over it.

[Gautam]

Remove a stick of ram. It's a picky POSTer, and even pickier when running two or more sticks of anything. Last time I had those symptoms though, I had a couple of bent pins in the socket.

I don't remember the BIOSes very well, are you sure that 0078 works with retail Conroes?

[Absolute_0]

I didn't remove ram, but i replugged every wire. Did a hardcore clear by unplugging the PSU and removing the battery. Kept turning PSU off and on.

It's dead, it'll only come back to life by the same force that killed it: sheer random probability.

0078 supports Conroe, it's in FCG's guide to making P5WDH ready for Conroe.

[Gautam]

sheer random probability...you said it...thought I wrecked two boards for certain yet they're still living and going strong. Came back to life inexplicably and never stopped ticking since.

My memory is very fuzzy but I *think* that 0078 might be ES only.

A full clear sometimes isn't enough. I don't know why pulling one stick of ram works, but it almost always does anytime you'd think a board is dead.

Then again, a bent pin is very likely if you hand slipped even the slightest when installing the CPU...

[syne_24]

I didn't remove ram, but i replugged every wire. Did a hardcore clear by unplugging the PSU and removing the battery. Kept turning PSU off and on.

It's dead, it'll only come back to life by the same force that killed it: sheer random probability.

0078 supports Conroe, it's in FCG's guide to making P5WDH ready for Conroe.

I thought it only supported ES Conroe. I was going to flash it but decided not to risk it.

[^don.k's^]

Try removing ram and so. Sometimes, even if i dont remove the ram, the mobo doesnt POST and it will if i reseat the ram. Ive thought i killed the board but wasnt so.

Good Luck !!

[Absolute_0]

I tried messing with the ram no luck. The board is DEAD. What a POS.

[thunderstruck!]

This is another reason why I will never buy an ASUS mainboard again unless they do a complete 180.

You should RMA it and then sell to at least get some money back.

[Absolute_0]

Yeah i instructed my friend on the RMA process. Right now we're about to take off to Fry's in San Jose to pick up a new board. He's going to be using my good E6700 so i'm aiming for 3.6 Ghz 24/7 on air.

[Absolute_0]

We got him a P5B Deluxe at Fry's and it's working fine.

However i went to OC the 6700.

Set FSB to 320, ram (PC6400) to 667 divider = DDR2-800 (stock), voltage to 1.4v, PCI-E to 105.

Didn't boot. ??
Had to reset BIOS.

It's on the default bios, does it need to be upgarded?

[Nosfer@tu]

THE Issue with CSS is because you doint have SP2 installed

It happens when you go above 4150 mhz Try to run CMD and ping some page.

IT IS FUN

[Pinnacle]

Asus for ya, Ive had nothing put trouble