# My Nightmare Build: To help you avoid such an experience



## g.raney54 (Jul 2, 2008)

About 3 months ago my friends father decided that his old HP was too clogged up w/ crap downloaded from the internet and too outdated for his liking. He recruited me to suggest a new computer for him. He told me what he wanted and I built it on a website that wanted to charge $1700 for it. I told him I could do it for apx. $1000. Needless to say he agreed. I set out searching NewEgg.com, Mwave.com, TigerDirect.com, Etc. to find all the parts and reviews I needed to plan out his computer. 

I built my desktop about 3 years ago on a budget, and slowly added onto it here and there for the next year. It has been running strong for 2 years w/o any major hiccups or failures. This smooth build made me like all the brands that I put in it. MSI, ASUS, AMD, and Seagate. Therefor I stuck to these brands when building this mans computer. I even made it a point to buy components that would be stuck into each other from the same manufacturer, thinking this would somehow make them play nicely together. So there's the background, Here's the setup I purchased:

Case: CoolMaster Centurion
Power supply: Real Power Pro 650W
Motherboard: ASUS P5N-D
Processor: Q6600 Kentsfield Quad-Core
Video Card: ASUS EN 9600 GT
Memory: Mushkin 4(2x2GB) (996557 to be specific)
Processor Cooling Tower: ASUS v-60
DVD Drives: Dual Samsung DVD SATA Drives (SH-S223F 22X)
HDD: Seagate 32M ST3750330NS 750GB (SATA)
Wireless: EDIMAX wireless card
3.5" driver: Rosewill 52 in 1 card reader

I put it all together and started installing Windows XP x86 on it. He didn't really need x64 for anything. He used XP before and didn't really want to learn a new OS so I just stuck w/ 32-bit XP.

At first it couldn't make it through the installation. It always stalled when it said "24 Minutes left" I figured it was because it didn't know what to do with 4GB of ram. So I took a stick out. Installation went fine. I put the stick back in and BAM BSOD. So I figured it was still an issue of it being confused by extra Ram. I took that stick back out. Looked around for a bit then decided to take the other stick out and leave stick A in. Sure enough I got misc. BSODs (MEMORY_MANAGEMENT, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL etc.) all day long. I don't even remember what all of them said anymore. Anyway, I ram Memtest86+ on the stick that caused the BSODs and after about 15 seconds of testing it froze up w/ thousands of errors. I went to Fry's bought some Corsair memory, shipped Mushkins back, ate a $13 restoking fee, and my BSODs disappeared...momentarily...

I got everything on the computer working and playing nice together and thought I was in the clear. I only saw one BSOD and I thought that was the wireless card so I updated the driver and played with it for about an hour w/o a BSOD. I turned the computer over to him and drove back to Austin (this guy lives in Sugarland). Two days later he calls me saying that his screen turns blue every time he puts in a CD and says lots of strange numbers and restarts. OK more problems, goody.

I stopped by his house for a couple days (luckily I was in Houston anyway) and start seeing that this is a very sick computer. I have no trouble inducing a Blue Screen of Death. Here's what it says:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

Blah Blah Windows message that doesn't help anything Blah Blah

0x00000000D1(0x*Lots of numbers*)

nvgt.sys file error (don't remember exactly what it said, just the file is important)

So I looked around for various things, first the main driver message, then the numbers, then finally that little file error, which is where I struck gold.

nvgt.sys (not sure if that is exactly correct) is a file that has to do with the nVidia chipset on the motherboard. When I learned this my heart sank. I thought, "Shoot, now I'm going to have to send back the motherboard." I looked around desperately trying to fix it, and luckily in the middle of July nVidia, and Asus released some hotfixes and updates.

I updated the to the newest BIOS ASUS had available. I installed the newest chipset drivers that nVidia had available. It worked! No more BSODs w/ that same message whenever I inserted a CD or tried to install something. However, I must say that it looked from the support forums that ASUS left their customers hanging w/o a fix for this much longer than EVGA or other nVidia Motherboard companies did. Shame on you ASUS. I just lucked out to come along w/ the problem right about the time they fixed it.

That fixed most of my problems. I am still having issues with the Realtek ALC883 onboard HD audio. That is posted in a different, more appropriate thread.

I hope this post helps someone that might have these issues with these components, or will help people avoid these components. 

Peace,
G


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## jumbo1990ny (Jun 18, 2008)

if no one helps u here post this problem at www.techguy.org 
They will help you.


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