Month: May 2011

Resolving Asus P8P67 freezes

I recently built a new desktop system and chose an Asus P8P67 motherboard. After getting the system up and running, I noticed that it would intermittently freeze – perhaps the most enraging thing that can happen when setting up a brand new machine. Checking and replacing the usual suspect hardware yielded no results, but the Internet came to my rescue and helped get things stable.

In summary, if you have a P8P67 motherboard (this should apply to all variants, including the Pro and Deluxe), try manually clocking the RAM to 1066MHz if you are experiencing freezes. My memory is rated for 1333MHz but just would not operate properly on the board at this speed. The stalls manifest intermittently; they will happen anywhere from two minutes to ten hours after boot. The display stays on, but peripherals don’t respond – this fix won’t work if your end result is a blue screen of death. Your Memtest results should also show no errors.

Later suggestions include setting the memory speed configuration to XMP, not AUTO – I haven’t tried this yet as I’d rather not jinx my current functional setup.

On cats and wisdom teeth

And now for a bit of personal focus, since I’m up on Saturday morning with a pain in my jaw. More on that later.

Recently Kayla and I became the indentured servants to a pair of cats, which we’ve named Scotch and Soda. I’ve had mixed feelings about cats over the years; I remember wanting one for many years as a kid, but I think it was more the idea of having a “real” pet than anything. Mice can’t effectively curl up on the couch beside you, and don’t really have their own personalities.
 
I will subject you to only two photos:

scotch_dslr.jpg

soda_dslr.jpg

I also had four wisdom teeth removed on Thursday and am definitely still recovering. Last night was probably the most painful part so far: an ice pack and two kinds of painkillers didn’t help much. The actual pain isn’t where the teeth were removed, but completely in the top of the jawbone. This morning is a lot better but it’s a good reminder that I need to take it easy for the next few days.