Intel D875PBZLK

[skoone1]

Hi guys..

After being preached to by so many (not necessarily pertaining to this group) about how grand and wonderful Intel is, I made the leap. I went for the supposedly most stable stuff to get, namely an intel mainboard. I purchased a D875 along with a 3.06ghz cpu for it. I flashed the bios to P09 because I wanted raid 1. Well, I have to admit that yes, it's one hell of a stable board and all of my cards work like they ought to, which is a refreshing change.. But.... I'm now suffering from a CMOS/GPNV Checksum Bad error message when I boot the computer! It all started after the P09 flash. If I power down the computer then bring it back up, everything is cool. But if I power down the computer and come back to it a few hours later, I get this Checksum Bad error message everytime. This means I have to go into the BIOS and reset all the values over and over and over again. This won't get it. Anyone else having this issue other than myself?? Any ideas that could be thrown my way on how to fix this problem?

Thanks,
Steve

[Sandog]

I think the clock/n1 rule has to be enabled if you use all 4 dimms

[Miles]

Hi skoone1,

I'm wondering if perhaps you may have had a faulty flash that's causing those errors. Did you use the windows flash utility or flash from a floppy in DOS? Were all your values set to defaults prior to flashing? I believe I would flash back to your old BIOS and then flash back to P09.

TQ, I had the cold boot issues for a while and they seem to have been remedied. Don't know why but everything seems to be working fine now over the last few days. I flashed to BIOS p09 but had a few issues with my hard drives so I changed them to CS and that cleared those up. I was getting parity errors. This board is strange in that some of the issues seem to resolve themselves with time and then others appear to crop up. It's very unlike my Intel D845PEBT2 which runs pretty much flawlessly.

[skoone1]

Hi Paragon,

I had thought about reflashing P09 again but didn't know if it would be allowed. Think I'll try it again, just to see what happens. I flashed using the windows upgrade. It didn't offer me the chance to save my old bios (P05). I found that to be unusual.

Regards,
Steve
(just across the NC state line from ya!)

[Miles]

Welcome Neighbor

You might even want to try using the recovery BIOS found on the INTEL website with the P09 BIOS...There's also a link here somewhere where all the old Intel BIOSes can be found. I'll see if I can find it for you.

[Miles]

Here ya go Steve here's the LINK to the old D875PBZ BIOSes, just in case you want to try one.

[TQ]

Originally posted by Paragon
TQ, I had the cold boot issues for a while and they seem to have been remedied. Don't know why but everything seems to be working fine now over the last few days. I flashed to BIOS p09 but had a few issues with my hard drives so I changed them to CS and that cleared those up. I was getting parity errors. This board is strange in that some of the issues seem to resolve themselves with time and then others appear to crop up. It's very unlike my Intel D845PEBT2 which runs pretty much flawlessly.

It gets stranger. I am now at an SPD of 6-2-2-2 and can now restart from Windows with no problem.

For David Rolfe:

6=SDRAM RAS
2=SDRAM CAS Latency
2=SDRAM RAS to CAS
2=SDRAM RAS Precharge.

Hence the "6-2-2-2" designation.

[skoone1]

I should have stayed far away from Intel.....

Ok Miles, this main board apparently can't handle ver 09 as it continues to spew out Checksum Bad errors.. Bios 05 seems to hold up ok but now I'm getting two weird sounding beeps when the bios boots (I don't see any error messages though) and floppy drive A is now very flaky. It won't write anymore and it's erratic when reading. I can't tell though if it's a bios issue or a windows xp issue. I loaded default values in the bios, no luck. It seems I've just made matters worse.

Oh well. This is what I get for allowing someone else talk me into this intel mess and not listening to myself and what I want.

Steve

[Miles]

Steve,

Try BIOS P06 at the site I linked above, that has been one of the most stable BIOSes that has been released for this board. Get it stabilized and then flash to a greater BIOS later. I had some problems with my floppy as well early on and I was able to correct it by doing a few things.

1) Go into your BIOS and do the following:
a) Select load optimized defaults; then
b) On the Boot Screen enable silent boot
c) Disable USB legacy
d) Disable USB Boot

2) Make sure your hard drives and CDROM/DVD are set to cable
select

3) Make sure hyperthreading is enabled if you are running a PIV-C

4) Check your voltages in hardware monitor

5) Don't set manual memory settings until you are stable and even then run the CAS to RAS at no less than 3

6) Before you do any of the above things I would reset your CMOS

I'm not as crazy about this board as I was when I first got it either, I think most of the problems are related to not being able to adjust the voltages on the memory, AGP, and VDIMM...but alas in about 2-3 weeks Intel is supposed to release a utility for this board and their 865PERL that will allow you to change voltages, OC the FSB (more than 4%) and a few other less significant things...It's called Intel Desktop COntrol Centre.

Goodluck and keep us appraised of what's happening.

[TQ]

That's excellent information, P.
By the way, I can now cold boot and restart at will. And THAT is with 6-2-2-2 timings.
Must run Sandra Max 3 and see what I can see...

[Taz_abx]

This board is truly schizophrenic at times.

One thing I've found that DEFINATELY throws me into the land of cold boots and CheckSum errors is using the firewire connection on my Audigy2 Platinum. No matter what timings or BIOS I use, as soon as I connect something up (in my case, a card reader) to the firewire port, the system goes nuts.

I've also found that running with Legacy USB support disabled helps, as does running 6-3-3-2 with Burn In set to no more that 2%. I've had one cold boot happen since I set things this way...and that was when I was messing around with how my two-monitor video card was set (Matrox P650). All in all, I'm as happy as a clam (for now).

-Taz
P.S. I'm running the P08 BIOS...and you'd better believe this board won't ever see a new one.

[specmike]

Hey Taz, not to detract from this thread, how do you like the P650 card? What are the spex on it? I have not shopped Matrox since I bought our G550. Is the P650 any relation to the Parhelia (hence the "P" in P650)?

PM or email the answer if you don't want to hijack this thread.

Mike.

[Taz_abx]

PM sent, Mike. Thoughtful of you to be respectful of the original thread's subject.

[specmike]

I try to be considerate especially with important threads like this one. People are resolving problems and making some headway and this is a long running thread.

I have the feeling that several of them are ready to strap their Intel MOBOs to their noggins and take header off of a 10 story building. I'd hate to feel responsible for that. Hopefully Intel will resolve all of this and get out a nice Uber Bios for this MOBO. This is a shame.

Mike.

[skoone1]

I dumped P06 into the board late last night. Those two weird sounding beeps when the bios boots are now gone.. And the computer seems very happy at the moment. However, floppy drive A remains hosed. When I have the time, I will stick another hard drive in and load perhaps DOS 6.2.. or something that heavily uses the floppy drive to see if it's an Intel problem or a Windoze problem.

I agree though, I think it'll be a long time before this board sees another flash although I was looking forward to raid 1.. And I won't get it with P06. That's OK.. At least it's mostly stable and that works for me.

Steve