Major Windows installation trouble. Help??

[holmescreek]

Hey All,

I recently upgraded to an Athalon Socket A 850 with a Soyo k7VTA motherboard. The problem I was (is) having is that during the installation of Windows 2000 Server or after installing Windows 98/95 (I tried all 3 on a formatted drive) my machine freezes up. Over a period of 2 days, I swapped everything out, ram, keyboard, mouse, video, harddrive, power supply, I mean everything down to just the board, ram and a video card (PCI, AGP & even an ISA). I did several virus checks with updated definitations as well as Symantec's free online scanner. I also cleared the CMOS and disabled virtually everything in the BIOS (I even swapped out the BIOS chip). I was thinking it was a hardware problem (or cooling), but I can run scandisk in DOS and it runs fine for hours.

Now, here is the weird part. I hooked up my drive to another system, installed Windows 2K Server, then plugged the drive back into the problem machine. It doesn't freeze. I don't see any IRQ conflicts either.

Does anyone have a clue about what is going on?

Thanks!

[James]

It sounds like some kind of motherboard problem.

I presume it is impossible for you to swap out your motherboard to confirm or deny this?

[micmar]

I would have to agree with James. I reckon if you changed the motherboard you would have success.
I have had similar problems to what you have described and many times it has been the motherboard.

Just out of interest, what motherboard is it?

[holmescreek]

Micmar, its a Soyo k7VTA Socket A with an Athalon 850.

Yeah, I figured it was the board but thought maybe someone had the same problem and their might be a patch for the chipset or something. It hung when I powered it on this morning, so I'll just leave it running until I get my Slot A Tyan board that I RMA'd last week.

I've had problems with Soyo boards before, typically they integrate everything like sound, video, and its very hard to add something like a PCI modem because virtually all IRQs are mapped out. Typically, the onboard sound will map out IRQ 9, which conflicts with most AGP video cards.

I'll probably never buy another Soyo, simply because now if you RMA a board they want to charge you $15 for return shipping. All in all, I would have $95 in it when I can buy a new one with shipping for about $65. The funny thing, their RMA dept answering machine instructs you to go to the website to download the RMA form -- duh, now how are you supposed to do this when your computer is down?

The board came from Tiger Direct. I've bought from them for years. In the last 4 months I have had done around 30 orders for myself and friends. Overall, they have shipped 2 dead boards, a dead printer, a dead power supply, a barebones system that hangs when USB is active, and "generic" DIMMS when I specificly ordered PNY all in different orders. They also started backordering everything for 2-3 weeks, so by the time you check out the equipment the 30 day exchange is up -- I was told the 30 day exchange is active the date of purchase and not the date of receipt. On top of all of this, in nearly every case myself and others have paid for next/2nd day shipping, the item will arrive about 5 days later, but shows as "shipped" on the order status. They are just begging for a class action suit on this alone.

I guess like with other things in life, you pay for what you get in one way or the other. Thanks for all the advice, guys.

[micmar]

Originally posted by holmescreek

I've had problems with Soyo boards before

Soyo were regarded by many people as one of the top motherboard manufacturers in the world for quite a while but in the last 6-8 months there name has dropped away and there products are no longer as popular as they once were.

The board came from Tiger Direct. I've bought from them for years. In the last 4 months I have had done around 30 orders for myself and friends. Overall, they have shipped 2 dead boards, a dead printer, a dead power supply, a barebones system that hangs when USB is active, and "generic" DIMMS when I specificly ordered PNY all in different orders. They also started backordering everything for 2-3 weeks, so by the time you check out the equipment the 30 day exchange is up -- I was told the 30 day exchange is active the date of purchase and not the date of receipt. On top of all of this, in nearly every case myself and others have paid for next/2nd day shipping, the item will arrive about 5 days later, but shows as "shipped" on the order status. They are just begging for a class action suit on this alone.

There are far to many GOOD resellers out there for you to put up with this type of service. It is admirable that you have been loyal to this company but if they are not giving you what they claim then you should look for a company that will deliver as promised.

Check out www.resellerratings.com to see how they stack up before you buy.

Mic

[holmescreek]

Thanks, micmar, I'll check out some of the links you provided.