ECS Nforce3-A (1.0A) and the Sempron 2800+ saga

[epofhouston]

I have to join just to post this...

I bought the Fry Sempron 2800+ and ECS Nforce3-A combo after much reviews and discussions here. I have nothing but problems with the installation.

First some background. I had an Athlon XP 1700+ that went dead so I tried to replace the CPU and the motherboard with this combo. I had a AGP card and PC2700 memory so I figure that I can reused those if I got this combo.

Right now the system is
Sempron 2800+
ECS Nforce3-A with the 1.0f BIOS
64MB AGP card
784 mB PC2700
OPTORIDE DVD-burner
Generic DVD-ROM
Maxtor 160GB single harddrive.
Ultra-X 450W PS

First I tried to re-install XP on top of the existing system and it was up for awhile until I installed the Nvidia IDE driver (Don't do it). It hose the OS and the computer would constanly reboot at the flash screen. I tried to boot up XP in safe mode but it seemed to hang at the giveio.sys. I tried to use XP recovery console and disable giveio but it just hang on mup.sys this time. I gave up and reinstall XP again. Once again it came up so I installed nVidia drivers except for the IDE one.

Everything was OK except for the onboard LAN. I couldn't get it to work so I used another NIC card to get on the internet to download all of the patch. Then I notice that XP would not recognize the second DVD-ROM (which as a slave to the DVD-burner). The burner would work for a while and then mysterious stopped. I can get it back by rebooting XP. So I figure it's the IDE driver.

Before I tried to re-install the nVIDIA driver, I was going to make a Ghost of the C drive so I can get back fast. Stupid me, I tried to make the C drive smaller by using Partition Magic 9 and it totally hosed the hard drive (I had a 128 GB partition and the 32 GB partition).

I couldn't even do a XP re-install on the drive so I have to blow away the two partitions and reinstall a fresh copy of XP. I got the system back up and here's the status on my system.
-I ended up with one partition @128 GB. I can see the 32GB unallocated space but I can't assign anything to it. I used the built-in XP disk management and Acronis Disk Suite trying to make the 32 GB a partition but I can't do it. I tried to run the big_disk_enable from Maxtor (which I didn't need because I on XP SP2). I even play with the BIOS settings on the IDE devices but I could not get the 32 GB space in service.
-My onboard LAN is now working.
-I still can't see the DVD-ROM.

I am debating whether I should return or exchange the ECS MB. I have 1 more week left on the 14 days return window so I need some opinion. Does anybody else have this kind of problem? I am not a novice, I have at least 10 build under my belt, mostly from combo from Fry's and this is the first time I had this kind of headache.

Comment please.

 

[Harvey]

You need SP2 for XP to support drives larger than 127 GB. If your version is older, you may have to start with your present partition, and then, use something like Partition Magic to expand it to fill the drive.

An alternative plan would be to build your installation, update to SP2, then, use a utility like Norton Ghost from one drive to another formatted to use the whole drive. You could then reformat your original drive and Ghost back to it.

 

[epofhouston]

I have XP SP2 on it now. I can see the 32 GB of space in both XP disk management and Acronis Disk Suite but I just can't make it into a partition. I tried both a primary and logical but it just doesn't want to do it. I can live without the 32 GB of disk space but I am still concerned about it not recognize the slave drive on the IDE channel.

Interestingly, if I looked into the device manager, I see two primary and two secondary IDE channels. Anyboby had seen this? What a pain!

 

[Harvey]

I've heard about Acronis' prog, but I've never used it. If it has the same or similar features as Partition Magic, you may be able to delete the second (logical) partition, then, expand the main one to fill the space.

Hope that helps.

 

[furballi]

CLEAN INSTALL WXP!!! Don't blame the board when you have funky software issue. I have a post in the HOT DEAL section which will help with the installation of the onboard network card and other drivers. DO NOT install the firewall.

The Nvidia driver has always been a problem with NF3 and NF4 boards. It is clear that you have not had that much experience with building PC. You could avoid a lot of problems if you had reviewed all the posts about this board in the HOT DEAL forum BEFORE building the PC.

 

[epofhouston]

The copy of XP on my PC is a clean install. I still have problem with my HD. Thanks furballi for your words of 'wisdom'. As I had said, I built about 10 PCs using the Fry's combo and never had a problem until the Nforce3 board. If you goggled the ECS Nforce3 board, there are a lot of people with similar problems as mine. As for the funky software issues, drivers are parts of the motherboard so I do blame the motherboard.

It could be that I have a problem with my HD but there is no way to tell.

 

[furballi]

I've built 4 of these rigs. All went okay. Probably user error. Follow my directions at the other forum for a trouble free installation.

You should have known that the NVidia IDE driver can be a problem with some OSes/optical drives. This issue affects NF3 and NF4 boards. Do not install this driver. Load the audio driver from the ECS website. Reboot and install the other drivers (minus IDE and Firewall) from the Nvidia NF3 website (nForce 5.11 winxp2k). Reboot.

 

[Zap]

Just to repeat some of what's been said...

Do not install IDE driver.

Do not install nVidia firewall.

128GB limit is from lack of (minimum) Service Pack 1 on Windows XP. It's a chicken/egg problem. If you are unable to get SP1 or SP2 "slipstreamed" onto a disc for yourself, here's an alternate way to do things... you mentioned you have Ghost. Just do a clean install of Windows on whatever sized partition it will allow you. Install service pack. Ghost the disk and re-Ghost back. Ghost will expand to use the whole size.

As for DVDROM not working... don't have a good answer to that. I personally have a CDROM that no longer works daisy-chained to another drive while in Windows. It's done that through two motherboards and two installs of Windows. Works fine outside Windows. I have no explanation for the behavior.

 

[Peter]

And always, always test the RAM first, before installing anything. Even if the board is new and the RAM has been working fine elsewhere. www.memtest.org