ASRock P4VM890 Wont Boot

-Aura-

-Aura-

-Aura-

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Joined
26 Jan 2007
Posts
901
Location
Newcastle
Previous basic config:

ASRock P4i65G
P4 3 Ghz
2 x 1Gb DDR400 (CL3)
7300GT AGP
1 x SATA HDD/ WinXP
1 x E-IDE/Vista
1 x E-IDE/Storage
Pioneer burner
500W PSU

What I did:
Swapped mobo for a P4VM890
Swapped 7300GT for 8600GT
Added SATA HDD

What didn`t happen:
Windows wouldn`t boot from either drives in Normal/Safe

What I did to try and get out of it:
Removed all hardware except each HDD in turn ... no luck.
Tried different RAM (only 2 x 256 but compatible with board) ... naa.
Hooked up DVD drive, stuck in new SATA drive ... running note, altered BIOS correctly for each scenario ... clean installed XP, went spiffingly, tried full boot, bombed out again, then got to log in screen and NT Authority pop-up appeared and auto shutdown occured. Couldn`t even safe mode after that.

What I did next:
Whopped things back to the way they were yesterday. New and old Windows, regardless of which drive they are on boot up fine.

Additional:
Bios for both boards are pretty similar, though new one has Raid ability. I turned this off ... default is on so other than that, I eventually returned Bios settings to factory ... nowt worked!

Would really appreciate some help! I`m stumped, other than the obvious that the board is goosed. I`m thinking that there must be some setting somewhere in the Bios that I`m missing ... I only say this because a Google search with the board code + wont boot yields a multitude of disgruntled punters, surely not so many folk have a dodgy board?

Raised the issue with ASRock techies ... reply basically: RTFM Geordie, it doesn`t support Vista ... they must have missed the part where I said I clean installed XP on a brand new drive.

If no luck, I`ll send the board back, then I`m stuck with a PCI-E card and 2 gig of 184 pin RAM ... I thought of a skt775 bundle with a core duo but I can`t find a single board with these features that will support my RAM.

:confused: :confused: :confused:
 
lol, didn`t think I`d get many replies to this one :D

Posting to self ... sad, innit, but maybe some help to others :)

I put "old" system back together again, managed to get a floppy rigged up to create a bios flash to the latest for this board, made myself a boot disk at the same time, flashed the bios, formatted the target drive and it`s partition, installed Vista ... hey presto, it worked.

But things started to go downhill quickly. All was well until I rebooted, blue screen, booted from CD, seemed rosey but then processes would freeze, DHCP was the first, then SSID, then Explorer.exe.

Bottom line, I give up! OS doesn`t like something ... even disabled USB support and plugged an old PS/2 keyboard and mouse in, they worked but again, BSOD at some stage. Oh, I nearly forgot, reformatted and tried XP install, no way Jose.

Never mind, next idea was the best, put "old" rig back together, crack open a can or twelve of Stella, couple of candles, latest Euphoria CD, fill in the return goods chitty ;)

:D

Now on the search for either:

skt 478 mobo with PCI-E slot that supports 184 pin RAM

or

skt 775 bundle (not bothered if it ain`t the latest core-duo) ... can you get them with 184 pin RAM slots? if not, a 3 way combo. Would appreciate some suggestions? :)
 
You replaced an Intel 865 chipset with a VIA 890 chipset so you were always going to have to be phenomenally lucky to avoid having to completely re-install windows.

Ironically, if you had replaced your P4i65G with a 775i65GV or 775i65PE you probably wouldn't have had to do anything other than possibly re-activate windows.

If you need PCIe graphics then ditch the whole lot and start again with an NVidia or Intel chipset motherboard, it's cheaper and will give a MUCH faster system than a VIA compromise chipset.
 
Thanks Guys

Cob, I reckon that`s exactly what I`ll do. That board is a corker for future upgrades (if I need them)! :)

WJA96, this was the only board I could find that would support my skt478 P4. Are VIA chipsets to be avoided? Quite a few boards seem to have them, I wouldn`t know the difference :)
 
If you do it right you can switch from one mobo to another even from one CPU brand to another. The last two upgrades I have done were:

1. AMD FX51 on an ASUS SK8N (Nforce3 Pro150) with ECC DDR to a E6320 on a 965DS3 with DDR2 on WindowsXP

2. AMD Opteron 165 on a ASRock 939S56-M (SiS756) to a Q6600 on a G33M-S2 on Windows 2003.

Both run fine, no conflicts no slowdown, no errors. What you do is go through device manager and change as many device drivers back to the default microsoft ones. Most important are disk contollers and chipset bridges.

I'm not saying everyone can or should do it. The biggest issues people have are with RAID arrays and drivers.
 
Second recommendation for the ASROCK 4CORE VSTA, it supports AGP and PCI-E, and DDR and DDR2 and the Core 2 Duo. Fine little board for 40 notes, add in the E2160 and away you go.

Did you repartition on the new board? I have had drives be flaky when they have been partitioned on a different PC.

XP can work without a full reinstall if you (as noted above just change the IDE drives to basic)...here is the guide I have used a few times.

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=77909774&m=1400925745
 
Unbelievable!

Decided to pull a nearly all nighter, read the internet!

Reset the CMOS using jumper on MB. Changed 3 settings I critically needed to: enable USB devices, enable PCI Express and non-RAID setup. Partial success, OS booted but Aero crashed and remained off, however could playback some HD content with Aero off, enabled it manually, playback of same content crashed OS.

I had read somewhere that someone had success by removing DIMM from bank2. This didn`t work for me but it drew my attention to RAM settings. Everthing by default is Auto, thought there is one setting in this BIOS that wasn`t in my previous motherboard BIOS "Bank Interleave". CPUID reported it as 4-Way, I disabled it ... system up and running like a charm! :) :)

I suppose this is a drawback with buying Value Ram? :(

Thank you all very much for your input. When I get over this episode (I know it`s early days, haven`t tried any extended gaming, though COH installed and ran brilliant for a short while ... I ended it, not the OS!) I may very well go for the board and chip Cob mentioned, we`ll see ;)
 
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