BIOS Ugrade started freezing ultimate64

Have an MSi KA9 Platinum motherboard AMI BIOS 1.5, took me some time to discover this didn't support Vista Ultimate 64 with 4GB so built machine with 2 GB RAM and its been fine.

AMD Athlon x2 6400 black edition
MSI KA9 Platinum Crossfire
HIS XT2600 Radeon 256 MB 1 only - in secondary slot
OCZ 2GB RAM Chips 800Mhz
2 OFF Western Digitan Caviar 250GB Disk SATAII not in RAID

Having got settled with new build and everything working very smoothly, read up more on BIOS and it had moved to version 1.8 with the points in between fixing 4GB faults. So I did the upgrade to 1.8.

System now continually freezes, literally after loading profile I can do anything so long as I dont use the mouse or open large frames, OS freezes or blue screens whenever this occurs, so downloads will run for 10 mins, (windows updates) or self extracting installers, but as soon as I do much with the mouse if freezes.

Safe mode is OK
Running Normal in VGA with Radeon drivers disabled is more stable but still goes.
taking 2 GB out doesn't help.
Cant get MS support because I cannot get to product ID before a freeze occurs and its not visible in safe mode.

Haven't reverted BIOS yet.
Latest drivers - Catalysts 7.11 and drivers for Chipset, CPU and graphics.

Windows has occasionally prompted on reboot that there is a problem with the graphics driver. MSI, ATI and AMD have been asked for support, issue still not resolved.

Is the only answer to go back to BIOS 1.5 and 2GB ram feels like defeat and I already lost one KA9 during bios flash which reported successful but killed the bios so I am very cautious about flashing BIOS.

Ideas appreciated.

Are you Overclocking ?
If so revert back to Stock settings and see if it still freezes,Overclocked settings which worked previously on the 1.5 BIOS may not work on the 1.8 one.
If you are using 4GB make sure you install that Patch from Microsoft.
(Check if it works fine with 2GB)

4 things id suggest doing b4 u revert back to the old bios

1st move your graphics card to the primary slot... using the secondary slot is not helping matters unless you go SLI
2nd un-install the mouse via device manager then reboot and re install any suggested drivers from the windows update on reboot
3rd check that you have ur ram in the correct slots i.e ram stick 1 1st slot to the left, stick 2 3rd slot to the right.... if your slots are full of ram then make sure they are paired correctly... i.e if you have 4x1gb 2x1gb ozc and 2x1gb Kingston
place 2x ozc in slot 1 and 3 and 2x kings ton in 2 and 4...but im sure you already know this and that its not advisable to mix rams
4th re try the bios update incase it corrupted in anyway shape or form

and if no of that works then revert back to the default bios

good luck m8y

Do all they said, (Above) and here is something else that helps out a bunch when safe works and nothing else will, go to you swap file, (this is something that works on many problems for xp and vista and 2000) go to the swap file and delete it and reboot and then go back to the swap file and restore it and select system managed size, oh uninstall your video drivers and reinstall them, I had a similar problem with an ASUS L1N, only 4 of my 8gbRam worked, Asus told me that the board wouldnt support 8gb at that speed, the board got worse, i replaced it with a new board (same) and walla all 8 gb work, turns out the board was bad, and asus was wrong, NEVER TRUST A COMPANY TECHNICIAN, anyway everyone should refresh that swap file every once in a while.

Thanks. I have tried the suggestions, sadly with no success...

I have now re loaded BIOS version 1.5 and the machine runs like a dream again. Bizarre.
I have also checked the patch version of Windows and will try the 4 GB RAM configuration to see if it works.

Hows that for hopeful.

Really appreciate the ideas, a lot more sensible than the support teams.

Glad its working again.
Stick to 1.5 until a better BIOS is out.

Ahh good to hear your back up and running
Fantastic

I have that motherboard. I also had instant hard locks that started occuring after I updated past 1.5. It all came down to usb storage devices for me. My logitech keyboard and mouse were not affected. This USB rollup patch is what eventually fixed it for me.

Cumulative update rollup for USB core components in Windows Vista

Also, you should set your HT link speed to 1Ghz (5x) instead of auto. You'll see a graphics performance hit if you don't. It was only a difference of 500 points in 3DMark06 for me, but others have seen 40%.

BIOS 1.8 seems to be the best BIOS for me. I have 4GB of memory, so I needed a newer BIOS than 1.5. 1.7 is the first BIOS that let's you select the HT link speed manually. It also lists 4x (800Mhz) which helps for overclocking.

I have had zero hard locks since doing this. I hope I didn't just jynx myself

I had the same problem. I added +2gb memory to the system, I have upgraded the bios to 1.8 And the system freezed all the time. I upgraded from Vista 32 to Vista 64. Still the same. But strange was that XP 64bit was stable. Eventually I have removed the additional 2 gig ram and downgraded the bios. The system was unstable on bios 1.7 but stable on 1.5

roland59 have you tried bios 1.6 ?
I will try later to upgrade to 1.6 to see if the system is still stable or not.

BIOS 1.6 has a graphics bug slowdown it causes. BIOS 1.7 and 1.8 fix it by letting you select the HT link speed.

Anyone using 4GB of memory in Vista should install this patch first.

KB929777
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777

Also if you use any USB hard drives or other storage devices install this patch too.

Cumulative update rollup for USB core components in Windows Vista

deaden_07 said:

Error message when you try to install Windows Vista on a computer that uses more than 3 GB of RAM: "STOP 0x0000000A"

Also if you use any USB hard drives or other storage devices install this patch too.

Cumulative update rollup for USB core components in Windows Vista

Click to expand...

Both patch where installed. Do you know what is the default HT speed in the bios? What do you think, incorrect HT speed can cause freezing if you are trying to start a game?

Depends on what processor you are using. List the components of your system please.

AMD Athlon x2 6000
MSI KA9 Platinum Crossfire
Ati X1950 Pro Radeon 512 MB - Main card
Ati X700 Radeon 256MB - Secondary card - I do not want to use crosfire, just I need the second card.
DDR2 Corsair TwinX CL 4, PC6400/800 4x1GB (Currently 3gb is installed because of the problems)
Seagate 300Gb, 2x Seagate 200gb HDD's

Switch to BIOS 1.7 or 1.8. Install all 4 GB of memory. Set the HT link speed to 1Ghz not auto for that processor. If it still crashes in 3D, remove the second and try again.

Also make sure you have the latest DirectX updates installed. You may also wish to increase the voltage for the chipset and HT bus 1 or 2 notches.

What power supply are you using.

It's a be quiet! 450W

edit:
Look's like the HT 1000MHz helped. I still need to upgrade again to Vista 64 to use all memory, but I think that this setting stabilized the system.

Confirmed the HT setting helped.
Roland59 if you read this, upgrade to 1.8 bios, and set HT to 1000MHz. Thanks deaden for the idea.

I found that problem solution the hard way! I'm glad it helped!