OT: new PC catch-22

[Robert Baer]

3... all the same. Are they yours? Are you bopping all around town
looking at others PCs? WHAT?

Sounds to me like your issue is with the MOBO maker.

It was not manufactured to not boot the XP CD. It is likely that it
is a bad design that made it into production.

You say it is the latest and GREATEST. Even though most combo deals
that are NOT the stores TOP combo deal is some lame
"get-it-off-the-shelves" crap they are trying to dump a bad purchase
decision off on someone else with.

WHAT FUCKING MOBO IS IT?

Could also be a memory problem.

Offered in combo or not, not all these fuckers at these stores know
what the **** is going on. You could have crap off brand memory in
there that barely made the spec. Combos rarely offer top name items.

Have you ever seem ECC RAM in a combo offer? I haven't. I had to
BUY mine.

Go have your RAM speed tested at a DIFFERENT store.

Gee, this is the first time someone dissed KINGSTON memory.

 

[MassiveProng]

Gee, this is the first time someone dissed KINGSTON memory.

Obviously you have never read one of the head to head reports that
are done constantly in the industry rags.

A lot of makers place their acceptance standard right next to the
speed declared, and that's a recipe for disaster... at the user end.

Try clocking DOWN the MOBO, and see if it boots.

You think I'm kidding, right?

 

[Robert Baer]

Start with new (6-month old), bleeding edge stuff: motherboard, Intel
D CPU, 80Gbyte hard drive, Sony DVD R/W, 500W supply, WinXP Pro.
Major problems:
1) "Intel uCode error...press F1 to continue" no boot from the WinXP CD.
2) Update BIOS to latest available (beta): the uCode error goes away; no
boot.
3) Go into the BIOS setup, first screen: *nothing* recognized; Primary
Master, Primary Slave,Seconsdary Master and Secondary Slave all have the
same message, to the effect "nothing available".

But, in booting up, there is a bit of screen fiddling, and the
installed hard drive and DVD drive are listed as present.
The DVD light has a very short blink after that, but the CD is not
accessed.

Now, the interesting part: plop in a PartitionMagic (bootable) CD, and
that works!
Understand, the PartitionMagic CD is old, way before Micro$uck thought
of XP (2002).

Seems to me that M$ has teamed with the BIOS and board makers to make
sure that one cannot *install* WinXp from scratch on these new computers.

But..if you happen to have a computer like that with WinXP installed,
the WinXP is readable and can be used for updates, etc.

So....
How in the h*ll does one start from scratch?

Here is some eXplicit info..
1) CPU: Intel Pentium D 960 (3.8GHz,800MHz FSB, L2 2X2MB, revD0)
2) Motherboard from ASUS supports that CPU but most recent BIOS is a beta.
3) Of 17 or so ASUS motherboards that can support that particular socket
775 CPU, only five have non-beta BIOS chips and for two of those, the
specs etc cannot be accessed on the ASUS site.
One of those three is their P5VDC-MX, a "value" board with onboard
graphics video.
The other two are the P5W64 WS Professional and the P5WDG2 WS
Professional motherboards.
The board that was "bundled" with the CPU and Kingston DDR2 800MHz
memory was one of those with a BIOS that is a beta as mentioned above.