Mainboard K7S5A Pro Boot problems

[Alan M. Kaplan]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but the next time you get a new MB, you might wanna spend a little more and get a better quality board. I was doing a web search for issues related to that board, and there's lots....

Alexander

You are right on target. As I said, I am a rank amatuer, but I have done 3 or 4 of these and have never before had this kind of trouble. The worst part of it is -- it is not even my computer! It all started out with me going to Frys to buy my daughter a new burner for her birthday. All that I looked at required a minimum of an 800 MHz CPU. She had a 700MHz. The next thing I know I decided the heck with the burner, she needed a faster CPU. So I bought this bargain basement combo CPU and Mother Board for $85. Of course I needed a new memory and a new CPU fan. And or course she was running windows ME so she needed Windows XP. Then I realized that I had two perfectly good 40GB HDs sitting around and she had one 20 GB. So I took all the data off the 20 GB HD and put that to one side for my grandson's computer. I finally got everything running like clockwork on my daughters old computer under XP, except the burner, wich I could no longer afford!

I then installed the new MB etc. and that is where I am now. My daughter has no computer and I am spending hours trying to get this running.

Like you, I found a lot of derog about this MB on the internet. My concern is that even if I get it running now, she is heading for trouble later. One thing I find particularly distressing is the lousy documentation and the lack of support on the Mainboard. There is no phone number, web site, street address or e-mail address. I can't even figure out the country where it was made. It also appears that this same motherboard is licensed to be made by a number of different manufacturers. The only brand name I find in the manual is "Mainboard". I find no Internet reference to this specific MB manufactured by "Mainboard". This brings into question the value of the guidance I can get from other manufacturers of this same board. I have no way of know how close they held to the nominal specifications.

Clearly, I am inches away from giving this board away to some guy I hate. I have an ASUS MB on my computer and have had no real problems. The documentation is not great, but it was adequate. My thinking now is that I will try to marry my CPU and memory with a new mother board which I will select by brand name. Do you (or any members of this forum) have any recommendations as to barand name?

Thank you for your continuing interest and assistance.

 

[wgrippo]

Hey I just joined this group because I was searching the internet for help on my new K7S5A Pro...I'm installing WindowsME, but having the exact same problems as the original post.......I can't get past the SafeMode screen when Windows reboots during install. I noticed that my DDR ram says 266MHz. And my CPU says 266MHz. I looked at the BIOS settings and they are set at 100MHz/100MHz. I changed them to 133MHz/133MHz (I'm really an amateur at this, but 266 is a multiple of 133, so I thought hey it's worth a try

Well it worked!! Try this Alan, I bet it will solve all your problems!!!

After that the install went well until I tried to install the drivers from the motherboard cd. They went fine until it hung up on the LAN driver install. Now I can't load windows, just keeps hanging up, so I'm going to try start all over again, remove the hard drive and format it in my other computer, reset the CMOS, and start again, with 133MHz settings and this time I won't install the LAN connection since this is my mom's computer I'm building and she only used a phone modem anyway....

Hope that helps....I let you know how it goes from here, but I'm sure the 133MHz settings will get you past your original problems....good luck!

 

[wgrippo]

Ok, so update here - I reinstalled everything with the 133MHz motherboard settings..........went fine until it froze up again. Kept trying to restart and it got worse and worse...thought maybe it was getting too hot, so unplugged the computer for a half hour. Turned it back on and works great - so now I know it's a heating issue. I too bought mine in the combo CPU/motherboard package from Fry's....don't know what the problem is, but after being on for more that 20 minutes or so, it starts acting weird - off to investigate further. Any suggestions? Fry's sold me the bare CPU and a CPU fan that they recommended, hmmmm.....