Trouble installing W2K PRO on ECS K7VTA3

[Twofootputt]

Building a new machine for my wife's girlfriend. ECS K7VTA3/Sempron2500 combo, 512 MB Kingston PC2700, 60 GB Maxtor, Pacific Digital DVD+-RW, Lite-On DVD-ROM,Antec 3700 case.

First try got POST, set up BIOS, all 3 IDE recognized. Put W2K bootdisks in, on 4th disk, got message, BIOS not fully ACPI compliant, disable ACPI by pressing F7 where screen says press F6 for RAID setup.
Ran disks through again, formatted & partitioned HDD (NTFS), started installing from W2K CD, all of a sudden, unable to install files, cleaned CD, reloaded floppies, tried again, same problem. Reformatted HDD tried with back-up copy of W2K CD, same problem. Cleared CMOS & tried,, same thing. Used the same CD to install on MSI KT4VL & 2500XP as a test & it worked.

Please let me know if it's the junk board or if I'm making a(nother) stupid mistake. Thanks.

 

[asm0deus]

i like my k7vta3, got xp?

 

[winr]

I have had 4 K7VTA3 mobos ver. 6 and 8 and they all ran great.

Sold 2 of them and kept 2.

Running Win 98SE on one and Win XP PRO on the other.

Someone will come along with a helpful answer Im sure.

 

[HaroldW]

I recently got a ECS K7VTA3 version 6 with a Sempron 2600+ (Fry's special $89.95 combo deal.) Windows 2000 Prof installed fine and it works great. I am using it now to write this message. I am not running any RAID configuration, though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Instead of hitting F7, what about hitting F5 instead, that should give you a list of HALs to install. Instead of the ACPI Uniprocessor HAL, which is apparently incompatible, you can try the "Standard PC HAL", which is the most compatible with older machines. If your BIOS supports the Intel MPS spec, and the chipset on that mobo supports an I/O-APIC, then you can also choose to install "MPS Uniprocessor HAL", which will give you access to higher non-legancy IRQ numbers, that should reduce IRQ conflicts and help the system to run smoother.

Just as a precautionary double-check though, sometimes if your memory is flaky, things won't install right either. I would download an ISO image of MemTest86+ , burn it to a CD, boot off of that CD, and run some memory diagnostic tests just to be safe.

 

[Twofootputt]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Instead of hitting F7, what about hitting F5 instead, that should give you a list of HALs to install. Instead of the ACPI Uniprocessor HAL, which is apparently incompatible, you can try the "Standard PC HAL", which is the most compatible with older machines. If your BIOS supports the Intel MPS spec, and the chipset on that mobo supports an I/O-APIC, then you can also choose to install "MPS Uniprocessor HAL", which will give you access to higher non-legancy IRQ numbers, that should reduce IRQ conflicts and help the system to run smoother.

Just as a precautionary double-check though, sometimes if your memory is flaky, things won't install right either. I would download an ISO image of MemTest86+ , burn it to a CD, boot off of that CD, and run some memory diagnostic tests just to be safe.

Ran the bootable Memtest. That turned out to be the problem, when I switched out the RAM to another set, everything set up fine. RMA'd the RAM w/no problem. I thought when it showed up as 512K on the POST screen that it would not be the problem. Thanks for your help.