(FIXED) Seeking PC help from system building gurus

[redrumloa]

*FIXED*

What started as a simple upgrade has turned into a nightmare. I got a GeForce GT430 for my youngest 2 boys for Christmas and the problems began. Here was the setup.

Asus A8S-X
AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800 (2Ghz)
Geforce GT430 (Started with Geforce 8400GS)
2GB PC2700 DDR
Windows XP 32bit (legal, registered)

Upon installing the GT430 one of the CPU cores went up to 100% load even when idle, even though System idle shows 99%. Games performed terribly, so the load was there. I checked all the usual stuff, latest bios, latest drivers etc, all proper. I figured the card was probably incompatible with the oldish(relative term) motherboard. I returned it for a HIS Radeon HD 5670.

No help... Install the 5670 and same problem. I figured to reinstall XP for the heck of it. What I found was interesting. When I installed XP and SP2, the driver seems to work like a champ. When I installed SP3, everything went pear shaped again. So, I figure it must be an OS issue and XP is EOL so I went out and got Windows 7.

Even worse... I installed Windows 7 and with the VGA driver, it looks great. When I download and install the latest ATI driver, the system locks up badly upon reboot. If I wait long enough I can move the mouse pointer but clicking on anything the screen takes forever to update (like 1-2 minutes). CPU load shows zero or near zero.

So what are my options? Installing XP with only SP2? Buying a new MB? I'd essentially have to build a whole new PC. Have any of you experienced any of this? There HAS to be a work around? The A8S-X is an older MB, but not prehistoric.

Anyone?

[redrumloa]

What bios update?!?!? Link??? The latest I see on the website is 1001, which I have. That would be a silver bullet! Link???

I have a Antec TruePower Trio 430W power supply.

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I decided to fall back to XP and only install SP2, rejecting SP3 completely. Now how to make it bulletproof against malware? :-/

I'm going to make a ghost image as soon as all updates, minus SP3, are installed. If anyone can think of a workaround down the road I will try it and fall back to this ghost image if need be.

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@Elpollodiabl & retero 71

RAM is good, PC power supply is good, bios settings good. No low hanging fruit to be picked here. I've done multiple installs between XP and Win7 and pinpointed to the fact it only works on XP up to SP2, as soon as SP3 is installed or immediately after the driver is added to Win7 everything screws up.

I reverted back to XP SP2 and everything worked great... Until I tried to install Dead Rising 2 game and it says it requires SP3 :furious::furious::furious::furious:

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@Trev
I used Process Explorer in XP SP3 a few days ago and it showed Interrupts to be hogging cpu load. I had no clue how to fix...

I reset bios defaults and disabled everything I could, no help. The bios is the latest, but the latest is 2006. I even tried disabling USB in the BIOS, but the system wouldn't boot windows without it enabled.

I am stuck trying to go back to SP3 now to try one more time before giving up. Windows shows no IRQ conflicts, I wonder if I can change the IRQ number?? Would that help? DOesn't seem likely but I am at a loss...

As for misc drivers, I don't have much installed atm. I am using USB on the MB with default M$ driver, Radeon with latest Catalyst driver, Sound Blaster with latest Creative driver, built in hard disk controller with default M$ driver. Built in 1Gbit Ethernet controller with latest Asus driver. That is it, additional built in devices (serial, parallel, sound etc) are disabled in bios.

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@actung
The power supply has a lead for PCI-E GFX card, but the HIS HD 5670 does not use this. The power supply has three 12V rails with 16A each. HIS only specifies 400W or greater recommend, not 12V rail amperage. It does not act like a power supply issue to me, but I could borrow my 1000W monster from this box to test just in case.

[redrumloa]

Yep, again everything was fine with SP2 and as soon as I install SP3 I get phantom CPU load.




This system is freshly booted and idle with no HD activity and no programs running.

[redrumloa]

Here is the culprit, hardware interrupts...

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ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!!!!

Micrsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio is causing the problem. It is disabled and I have no high cpu load due to interrupts. Now to see if I can use sound with that disabled or if I can get the hotfix out of Micro$loth.

:banana::banana::banana::banana:

[redrumloa]

ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!!!!

Micrsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio is causing the problem. It is disabled and I have no high cpu load due to interrupts. Now to see if I can use sound with that disabled or if I can get the hotfix out of Micro$loth.

:banana::banana::banana::banana:

After reboot this disabled driver keeps re-enabling itself. I found the file and deleted it. So far, so good. I am using a PCI sound card and not missing any sound. Idle CPU load is about 0%-1%, hardware interrupts not causing any load. YAAA!!! I've only been at this for 4 days...:madashell:

[redrumloa]

PSU is ample for that machine. I'm running a 340W Chieftec w/ Athlon IIx4 95W, 3 GB, 4 HDDs, GTS450 (106W) + some PCI cards -- full load (synthetic) on GPU and CPU makes the PSU buzz a little but the system's stable.
 
Now that you seem to have found the problem: didn't you try with disable sound before? :elvis:

Yes, this driver is NOT the sound card driver for the sound card I am using. Disabling the actual sound card did not help. Look under "System Devices" in Device manager, you will see it. I don't know what that is for, but it does not appear to have an effect on my system since I deleted the actual file and the computer works fine with all sound.

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@redrumloa
 
It's probably the sound driver for the HDMI output on the display adapter, as Terminills said.

 
I don't know abount that, the driver's date was 2001. My early 00's business dell laptop with XP has this driver showing under Device Manager, System Devices. This driver is not specific to the ATI Radeon HD 5670 video card. If you mean it should allow sound to be passed through the HDMI, that is possible and likley. I have never done this, the speakers are hooked directly to the PCI sound card.