680i/wolfdale bsod on os install

[ZeroOne]

I’m working on a friend’s alienware after he attempted a processor upgrade and motherboard replacement and am having a hard time trying to determine which piece of hardware is failing, and causing bsod's on windows installation. Looking for a 2nd opinion.

It’s an alienware with;
EVGA 680i (122-CK-NF67-RX) board – P32 bios
E8400 default speed, with alienware’s version of liquid cooling
2GB Patriot DDR2 800
9600GT
2x Seagate 7200.10, sata, 250GB HD’s (originally raid-0, separated for testing after BSOD’s started)
2x IDE dvd-rw

First, the board would reboot (on request, not randomly, like after saving bios changes) and come back with no video. After taking the battery out and clearing the CMOS many times, (and having to WAIT or it wouldn’t work) I realized EVGA sent this board with the fan removed from the northbridge heatsink. With a panaflo in place, the board would finally “act normal” for lack of a better term. So that was obviously overheating.

Moving on, I’ve tried installing vista and xp pro separately, on both, the raid-0 and each individual disk. Both bsod on first boot from the hd. Both disks have been removed and formatted in windows on a working machine with no problems, and tested independently with an XP install. Even replaced the sata cable & tried different ports. Same result.

Ran memtest86+ 2.01 from a USB floppy with no errors, multiple runs.

Occasional post error, “Keyboard error or no keyboard present”
(The keyboard is fine. Used in many systems.)

The BSOD errors for xp are (and remember, this is the first boot after installing from the CD);

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (STOP: 0x0A)

A driver corrupted pool memory used for holding pages destined for disk. (STOP 0xDE)

process1_initialization_failed (STOP: 0x6B)


My only guess is, bad motherboard? Maybe the southbridge overheated and is causing data corruption to the hard drives? I think the –RX at the end of the code means it is a refurbished unit.

Thanks for any input. I feel like I’ve tried everything but wanted a 2nd opinion before I have him RMA or buy a different board.

[ZeroOne]

Looks like this might be the same issue people had complained about back when the evga 680i boards were released. Massive SATA corruption. I thought this issue was fixed at around a P23 bios? Maybe this refurbished board is an older one that had this problem and now it's being recycled into service again.

[SNiiPE_DoGG]

680i are just really bad in general. IMO get a new board asap. (I suffered through 5 680i's the last one I got back from RMA went to charity lol)

[ZeroOne]

As and update, with NO sata drives, even an IDE has the same error. I'm just going to have him send the board back.

680i are just really bad in general. IMO get a new board asap. (I suffered through 5 680i's the last one I got back from RMA went to charity lol)

Yeah, they're risky boards. I have a striker extreme that's been ok, but I dare not disturb it with too many upgrades. Its nice to upgrade for performance gains, but with these, its to cut fear and stress out of your life.

[Leeghoofd]

Have you adjusted any voltages in the bios ? or left it all at auto ? try NB voltage to 1.35 and SB 1.55

[ZeroOne]

Have you adjusted any voltages in the bios ? or left it all at auto ? try NB voltage to 1.35 and SB 1.55

Thanks for the suggestion... I've tried quite a few things in the bios with no luck. Manually set the NB up to 1.45v and HT (Spp<->MCP) to 1.40. The SB on auto starts with 1.50v. Tried all the way up to 1.625v with no luck. Dropped SPP->MCP & MCP->SPP to 4x (from 5x). All spread spectrum disabled. Disabled SLI memory and Nv GPU Ex support.

With those, the farthest I've gotten was to install windows and boot it ONCE. (Not once per install... once ever. All other installs BSOD on first boot.) Amazed that it got that far, I ran HD-tach and came back with a whopping 6MB/sec for transfer speed, sequential. SIX! lol! (It's not the cable or sata port... tried different of each.) The same drive, hooked as a secondary on my machine got around 80MB/sec. Never got back into windows again after that. BSOD, on the next boot, then files missing after that.

It's one thing to be doing all of this when you OC... but seriously annoying just trying to have a functional, stock system! Oh well... a new board will straighten it out, I'm sure.