Do I need a new motherboard?

[TheDebater]

About a week ago my computer froze, so what, it happens. I restart it freezes in the white windows 2000 boot screen with the little blue indicator about 1/2 way done. I reboot, it does it again, reboot, happens again, i repeat this process several times. I stick in the 2000 cd and try and use the automatic repair options. nothing. i do it again, nothing. So i clean install 2000 on my other partition. Works reboots fine once, second time I try and reboot it freezes and refuses to ever get past the white boot screen. So i take my hard drive out, back up my files on my other computer (the HD did fine, no problems), put it back in and wipe the partitions. I clean install 2k again SAME THING HAPPENS, this time its after i install the Promise ATA 100 controller (oh, i have an Asus A7V with a T-Bird 900, 512 PC133, AiW Radeon, SBLive!, some 10/100 NIC, an old 4mb SIS video card, 12/10/32 Plextor, and a 12x Toshiba DVD). I had taken out everything but the Radeon, the cd drives, and the hard drive, i had also taken out 256mbs of memory leaving 256 in. So i wipe it all again and reinstall. The computer worked fine again until i tried installing the promise controller drivers from the Asus cd that came with the mobo.

So i wiped it again, installed 2k again, and installed everything but the promise drivers. the computer is running fine (though there is very little on it) so im wondering if its like a software/driver problem or if maybe something is wrong with the controller (is it even the controller?) and the drivers arent working with it? do i need a new motherboard? thanks

Tristan

 

[Mwing]

I had this experience when I was installing Win2k before. I have a TBird 800 on A7V, 256MB RAM, sometimes install went fine but the first boot hanged, sometimes hanged after several boot up. Then I install again after changing the stick of RAM, then install was fine, and I was able to use it for like months. Then I formatted the harddrive due to some other problems, that time the RAM prevented me from installing Win2K again, I put the stick of RAM that had "problems when installing Win2K in the first time" again, and install was fine, and no problem also afterwards until I moved to WinXP a few days ago. And I installed a lot of times of WinXP due to my video card driver problem, but each install went fine with either stick of RAM. That's strange, don't know why A7V behaves like this. But I am fine with A7V. In my experience, Win2K + A7V + some "bad" stick of RAM = blue screen when install (it doesn't happen always though). Other OS, no problem.

 

[SyahM]

something wrong with the promise controller, try resetting the BIOS and find a new driver for the controller. I dont think your mobo is dead because if it is, you cant even POST.

 

[veryape]

Sounds like either a bad controller or driver issues in win2k.

 

[TheDebater]

so if its a bad controller does that mean i have to replace the motherboard? or if i only have ATA66 drives will it not matter if the controller works or not? thanks

 

[Garyl]

 

[Garyl]

Did you try hitting f6 and installing drivers for your card right after starting to load windows? I have that card and works great, hope thos helps.,Gary

 

[TheDebater]

thanks, the problem is its not like a PCI card, its built into the motherboard, though should i still try doing that? thanks