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Home: Video University Forums: Tech Q & A:
More Adventures In Computer Building

videobear
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Feb 22, 2006, 12:39 PM

Post #1 of 2 (547 views)
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More Adventures In Computer Building	Can't Post

I've come across an annoying thing or two that maybe some of you other homebuilders out there can help with:

This is for the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard.

1. After installing the included drivers and utilities, Windows recognized four new removable USB drives (presumably associated with the Nvidia RAID software, which offers hot-swap capability. But my RAID drives are NOT removable. Is there any way to get these "extra" USB devices cleared off the decks, without affecting the RAID itself?

2. I never know what items in the bundled software (for anything) will be useful, and which are junk. What utilities and applications (Cool N Quiet, Nvidia Firewall, AI NOS, etc) have you all found to be actually helpful, and which are not?

3. Anyone have stable settings (overclocked or not) for CPU and RAM that they'd care to share? My system is working pretty well on the defaults, but it's had a couple of random hangs. Possibly a tweak or two would improve stability.

4. Windows often (but not always) hangs at the "Windows is shutting down" screen, so that the computer has to be manually switched off. My other Athlon system also used to do this a lot. Anyone know the cause, or better yet, the cure?

Regards,
Doug Graham
Panda Productions

ssvp
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Feb 24, 2006, 11:13 PM

Post #2 of 2 (502 views)
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Re: [videobear] More Adventures In Computer Building [In reply to]	Can't Post

RAID Drives should not show up as USB.. Perhaps you have some USB card readers installed and just don't know it.. Typically for example if you had a 24" Wide Screen LCD from Dell and plugged the USB into it, it would populate 4 Removable drives for the card reader and it's 4 Slot Types.. You can go into device manager and just Disable those and they won't show in "My Computer" any longer..

Cool N Quiet is their speed step technology deal. But you have to enable something in the BIOS for that to work correctly.. Never bothered.

AI NOS - Is there Overclocking software, if you don't plan to overclock no need for it..

Nvidia Firewall - Egads! They are still bundling that thing.. My opinion don't install. Use XP's Firewall and if you have a cable/dsl router for home, your NAT firewall does a good job by itself.. That nvidia firewall has caused more problems than not..

3. Just let the BIOS determine the speed of the RAM and run your CPU at it's default clock.. At least for a few months.. Then feel free to go ahead and mess with the settings.. I believe all ASUS Boards include the AI Bios now, so if the settings are set to high, just unplug and start back up eventually you'll find a setting that works with your memory, cpu and video card.. Just google for some settings.. http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/54728/ As you can see many many many forums have a ton of info on this..

4. More than likely if you have the Nvidia RAID enabled that's your cause..It's been a comon problem among the AMD64's and certain boards.. Google should get you some more detailed answers..