$100 to you if your suggestion fixes this!

[KingCheese]

Alright guys I'm a manager at Best Buy and I will mail out a $100 gift card or just send you straight up cash/check/money order to anyone who has a suggestion that fixes this problem...

Bought a 1.1GHz Athlon T-bird and Asus A7Pro motherboard with 512mb PC133 RK-byte memory. BIOS IS LATEST a71005d!
GeForce II GTS video card that was in old Athlon 750 *slot a* system
27GB western digital hd
30gb maxtor hd
sblive!
ethernet card
creative dxr3 decoder board
tdk 12x writer and 5x creative dvd

ANYWAY! Put the system together, it's not hard, all jumpers on motherboard are set to default for jumperless bios settings.

It posts 1.1ghz 512mb ram blah blah...
I install WinME fine, very fast install, works awesome!
I reboot to setup WinME and POOF BSOD "VPOWERD Initilization Failure, You will need to restart your system. System halted" and nothing...

I have tried the following:
1) Swapping hds, installing fresh on both, etc.
2) Swapping video cards from GeForce II to Voodoo3 3000
3) Swapping memory from pc133 rk-byte to pc100 rk-byte to pc100 Kingston *memory worked in older athlon system*
4) Disabling power management in bios
5) Disabling usb
6) setting ram cas settings from 3 to 2 and 2 to 3
7) Made sure cpu/heatsink were properly mounted and working
8) Tried installing win98se only to get a "vcache intilization error"
9) bareboning it with nothing but video card in

WTF? HELP!
$100 to whoever has a suggestion that fixes this! hey that's a free stick of 256 pc133 ram!

Thanks
Cheese

 

[madthumbs]

Try another power supply.

 

[Brill]

Not sure any of this will help but what the heck. I would reset the bios and check then reflash the bios and test and I had a similar problem once where it ended up that the mobo was grounding to the case , found out by taking it out and testing it outside the case. if u don't have a backup cpu I guess u can't try that unless u could borrow one.. this prob didn't help but that was my .02$

Bri

 

[mnstrod]

Have a look at:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q153/3/95.asp

The problem sounds similar to yours.

 

[duragezic]

edited- N/m.

edited again- Well I know there is an error with vcache if you are running MORE than 768mb and the fix is to set MaxFileCache (in system.ini) to 512000 or less but since you are running just 512mb...Try booting with less RAM if possibly, like 128mb or 256mb. That may be the solution to the win98 error, sounds like it but th winme error sounds like a power management thing.

 

[DefRef]

mnstrod's article is for Win95.

1. Have you tried a different OS? Do you have Win98 or something else around.

2. Can you boot into DOS? (Like off a boot floppy.)

3. Make sure that ACPI is turned OFF.

I'll research further when I can.

 

[madthumbs]

RE; "$100 IF"

No offense but I see a possible trend here. There is nothing so far keeping people from posting messages like this and denying that anything ever helped them. Furthermore, I'm not here to make money. I help people when I can at my convenience; (even if there was no reward, I would have replied). This whole thing could be used by dishonest people to attain an unfair amount of assistance dishonestly. I'm surprised the thread hasn't been edited or locked.

-Just my opinion

 

[randypj]

Just a shot...but, I'm with eagle__2. I would try only a single, known good 128MB stick in each of the RAM slots.

madthumbs--personally, I have no problem with a post like this. In fact, there have been times I would have made an offer like that. Sometimes, I've passed my tolerance/time limit. Hey, you take a shot. Member profile and posting history would give you an idea of how serious they are.

But, of course, I advocate making a portion of Anandtech a pay forum.

I have had a few times when people went way above the call for me, and I've PM'd them and offered something, just in appreciation.
--Randy