Only systematic conflict detection helps reliably.

First of all you have to determine under what conditions the system crashes.

The best situation (and the only "easy" thing to troubleshoot) is when the crashes / lockups / reboots occur reliably and reproducable. If you are sure that your system crashes for example after a certain amount of time, after a certain action or with a certain application, then you're on the only reliable way to be sure to solve the problem.

If your system crashes / reboots / hangs sporadically (let's say once every week) : Tough Luck. That's where even Tech Supporters give up sometimes ...

Proceed like this :

1. Find out how to reproduce the error

2. Try one of the measures listed below.

3. Test the system.

4. Is the problem cured ?
Yes -> Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of a stable A7V.
No -> Repeat Steps 2 through 4 until you have tried all solutions.

Now You have tried everything, it's still not working. There still are reproducable crashes / lockups / reboots.

This means that you now have a system containing no expansion cards, only the Graphics card. Windows is freshly installed. There are no additional device drivers installed besides the via 4-in-1.

Strip everything not needed. Use a "naked system" like described on this page.

Try again.

If it still doesn't work ... then you have probably done everything possible to troubleshoot. Now it's time to think about hardware defects. Try getting another CPU, graphics card, other RAM, or another A7V to cross check these components.

Solution :

You most probably have some cards / components share one interrupt. This should theoretically work with all PCI devices. However, it often doesn't. Ideally, each component should have an IRQ on its own.

Look in the device manger if there are any yellow exclamation marks. If there are, look why. It might be an IRQ conflict.

Even if there are NO exclamation marks, shared IRQs may still cause trouble!

Please note: If you have Windows 2000 or XP, you might notice that many components are sharing IRQ9. This is only an "virtual" sharing, which cards really share can be seen in the tebles below! For further info see this Microsoft article.

If you have an A7V or A7V133:

A7V Page 30 / A7V133 Page 29 : "Interrupt Request Table for this Motherboard"

Only PCI Slot 3 has an unshared IRQ ! Try moving critical cards (eg. Soundcard) here.

Solution :

Especially if you have lockups / crashed in M$ Internet Explorer, try a different (first newest, if that does not work : older) BIOS Version.

Especially with pre-1004 BIOSes crashes in IE were frequent.

Other people reported that disabling "use smooth scroll" under Internet Options, advanced helps

Info on BIOS versions can be found in the BIOS area

Solution :

CPU HLT may be enabled, thus making the mainboard less stable. See this article for details.

Disable any CPU cooling software, don't use A7V BIOS 1003 but a newer one and don't use any temperature register hacks !

Solution :

In a forum thread an Idea against crashing GeForce cards has helped quite a few people:

Use DirectX Diagnostics (dxdiag in run) go to the
Display tab and make sure that the VDD File it is using is NV4_mini.sys and not NV4.sys (or some other file)

To correct it goto this Key in the registry

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nv]

And change the Imagepath key to read System32\DRIVERS\nv4_mini.sys

And also this key

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nv4]

And do the same as above change the Imagepath key to read System32\DRIVERS\nv4_mini.sys

Close regedit and reboot.

Solution :

Some drivers are stable, other aren't. Some drivers don't like each other.

Go to the manufacturer's webpage and get the latest Drivers for ALL your expansion cards and peripherals as well as for the Motherboard (VIA).

Read How to : What Drivers should I install? How should I install my Operating System ?
The section about the VIA drivers is essential for a stable Windows !

If that doesn't help, download either BETA, leaked or OLDER drivers. You can get all versions of graphics card drivers from http://www.3dchipset.com/ for example.

Many Problems with Soundblaster 64 / 128 / Live! cards are driver related. Go to www.soundblaster.com for drivers.

Solution :

Install the VIA 4-in-1 driver package.
Read How to : What Drivers should I install? How should I install my Operating System ?
The section about the VIA drivers is essential for a stable Windows !

Solution :

People have had various problems with the many BIOS versions avaiable. It seems that 1005 fixes most stability issues. If this doesn't work for you, try all other BIOS versions.

Info on the BIOS versions and where you can get them can be found here

Solution :

Ever wondered why you have a 909Mhz CPU at a setting of 100 X 9 ?

Guess what, the Front Side Bus setting of 100 shown in the manual actually creates a little more than 100 Mhz : It is about 101 Mhz.

There is an undocumented setting that actually sets exactly 100 Mhz, though :

for A7V: DSW switches 1 to 4 : 1&2-off 3&4-on

For A7V133 :
ON ON ON OFF OFF (54321, ie left to right) The ON position is usually down.
(Thanks DelivoS)

Solution :

Try other I/O Voltage settings. As Default, the I/O Voltage (for CPU I/O, RAM, Chipset etc.) is set to 3,5V instead of the standard 3,3V.

The Jumper is at top of the board, behind ATX Power Connector

Page 21

For 3.35V set the VIO Jumper to 1-2
For 3.56V set the VIO Jumper to 2-3
For 3.69V set the VIO Jumper to 3-4

It works OK with 3.3 V for me, but I did not verify that this lowers temperature.

3.3V causes no problems for me, though.

Solution :

If the processor, chipset, graphics chip or clock chip (or anything else) gets too hot the system may crash, hang or reboot. See Troubleshooting : CPU Heat for further info and the Cooling Guide for details on how to fix this.

If your problem occurs after a given period of time it's almost sure that it's heat related.

If (for example) your PC resets or hangs 10 to 15 seconds after turning it on, this is a dead giveaway for bad or nonexistent CPU cooling.

Solution :

Don't Overclock if you experience crashes. Try to get a 100% stable system first. That means NO crash for a week ...

Check in the BIOS if your CPU is overclocked or has overvoltage "unintentionally".

Set the A7V to Jumper free mode
Pages 18 to 24

Solution :

AMD has a patch for AGP related problems which applies to all types of Athlon / Duron Processors in Windows 2000 :

http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon-duron/amd_win2k_patch.html

More info is on http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q270/7/15.ASP

As I don't run Windows 2000, i can't verify that.

Solution :

Get a Power Supply Unit (PSU) with an rating of at least 300W. More would be even better. The PSU is one of the most underrated factors in system stability and one of the most neglected factors when building a PC. Get a good one, too - not just one that claims to be 300W.

Working for more than a year with shitty 60W open frame PSUs in industrial PCs made me realize that good PSUs are important ...

Solution :

Load "Setup Defaults" (press F5)
Better yet, clear the CMOS memory before you do this. Info on that can be found in the BIOS section, under "How do I update the BIOS ?"

Try setting "System Performance settings" to "Normal".

"AGP fast Write" may cause trouble - try disabling it.

Disable "Byte Merge"

Set the "SDRAM Configuration" to "Manual" and use slower (=higher) Values.

Try setting "Memory Data Drive" and / or CAS # Drive to "Strong"

Basically play around with the performance options

New : Planet3DNow has an interesting article up regarding stability of the A7V. Unfortunately it's in German - but if you can read it, do so. Basically it deals with "DRAM Read Latch Delay" and "Memory Early/Delay Write". Setting these to 2.11 ns and +1.0 ns is reported to have made an unstable A7V stable. If you suffer from unstableness, try playing around with these values. This is the article

Solution :

Try disabling the drivers of all expansion cards (in Device Manager) one after one.

If that doesn't help:

Try removing all expansion cards one after one.

This way you can find the driver or card making trouble. Try other driver versions / other pci slots.

Solution :

Do a CLEAN reinstall. Best of all, repartition, reformat and reinstall . See here for details on how and why.

Windows tends to degrade in stability while its in use. A new windows should be the most stable you can get.

Don't install any additional drivers yet, first test if it's stable without them. If it is, reinstall them one by one (starting with the 4-in-1 drivers), testing stability after each driver. This should point you to the driver causing trouble ...

Solution :

This seems to be caused by the Backup utility supplied with Windows 9x attempting to detect new tape devices on boot. You can fix it by renaming the files drvwppqt.vxd and drvwq117.vxd in the Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. If you find this causes your tape drive to stop working, you'll have to rename the files back. You can safely delete the files if you don't have a tape drive or don't get problems.

- Make sure that VSYNC is enabled in the NVIDIA control panel.

- Another possible fix is to simply disable the startup sound.