Help! Epox 8KTA2 w/Duron 800 posts, but it won't boot

[VansTheMan]

Ok, so my friend got this Epox 8KTA2 w/Duron 800 free from his work. It posts fine, we even penciled the Duron and messed with ocing it a little bit and got it to 1050MHz. Everything is fine until we try to boot into XP. We set everything to default, but when it gets to the XP splash screen, it flashes a BSOD (blue screen of death) and reboots. There's an LED back by the RAM that is always lit up red. Two of the PCI slots don't work and the AGP slot doesn't appear to work. I thought it might have been the PSU, so I had him remove everything except the primary HD, but still no dice. We flashed a new BIOS, no help. If anybody can think of anything or wants to know anything else please post. We really wanna get this sucker working and maybe put it in the MAME arcade.

 

[VansTheMan]

Alright, the AGP port works. I tried booting in safe mode and safe mode with command prompt. It always stops when loading Windows\System32\Drivers\agp440.sys. I would really like to know if this is a motherboard issue or a Windows issue. It seems to me that if the mobo posts and tries to boot, but is greeted by a BSOD, it would be a Windows issue. That could also just be me being hopeful, though. Hurricane seems to be going well here in MD...

EDIT: I tried putting my primary HD, (you know the one I'm using now to get help on this forum?) but BIOS couldn't initialize it. Are these mobos finnicky or something? I'm also able to boot to command prompt using a 98 boot disk (only reason I keep floppy drives around, bless them) and ScanDisk shows no problems with his drive. This is a most perplexing dilemma...

 

[Mem]

I presume you tried "last known good configuration" ,anyway you tried reformat or repair with XP CD?I would keep everything at default until you have it up and running stable,as to the red LED on the board that`s normal,I`ve that on my EPOX 8KHA+ I believe it just means the board has power.

 

[VansTheMan]

Yeah, I tried all that stuff. heh, we overclocked it just to see what we could get it to before we put it in the case. We set everything to default before we tried to boot into XP. I even tried a clean install of XP on a drive that I had lying around, but I still got a BSOD upon boot. The same drive boots fine in my computer. I tried swapping RAM with some good Kingston CL2 RAM, nothing. Anything else?

 

[PanzerIV]

VansTheMan have you tried a different IDE cable? Sometimes the simplest things are overlooked and end up being the cause of our problems. I would have initially suggested RAM but you've already tried that route and swapped it out.

 

[VansTheMan]

Yup swapped the IDE cables from his board with the never-been-used ones that came with my A7V8X.

 

[VansTheMan]

bump

 

[redhatlinux]

Have you given ANY thought to the fact that mobo/cpu combo was 'free' because the mobo is infact bad ???

 

[VansTheMan]

No, not at all... Yeah, we thought about that, but I'm just trying to exhaust every possibility before giving up. The computer shop he works at basically works like an insurance company. If the time it would take to get a motherboard working for a customer would cost the customer more than just buying a new mobo, they tell the customer to buy a new mobo. It makes sense, plus I think the guy wanted a new computer anyway.