Video Card and HDD problem!

[aatitan]

The specs of my computer are :

ASUS A7V8X-X Motherboard VIA KT400 SktA
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
Powercolor Radeon 9200 SE AGP 8X 128MB DDR (ATI Powered)
Western Digital 120GB Ultra ATA/100 HDD
PC 2700 DDR 1x512+1x256 MB RAM
Sony CDRW/DVD drive

When first I had set it up, I installed WinXP Pro and everything was working fine until I ran a media file, in particular, a movie. Whenever I play a movie, the comp. used to reboot itself. I figured something was wrong with the AGP card, so ran the dxdiag and it reboot again when I ran the 3D Acceleration test on it. I updated the drivers from ATI website but it did not affect the system. After going through a lot of forums, I thought that probably something is wrong with my Windows itself, so reformatted the disk to install. Only this time it refused to do it. It kept saying some file or the other was missing. This happened when I tried installing either WinXP or Win2k Pro. I tried using both NTFS/FAT32 but in vain.

I then successfully completed installation of Win2k Pro SP4 on a different computer (Intel P4) and everything was fine. But when I tried booting the hdd on my computer (AMD), it started giving errors such as:

1. INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
2. BIOS IS NOT FULLY ACPI COMPLIANT

The only ACPI setting that I see in the BIOS was "ACPI Suspend-to-RAM" which was disabled. I do not know what it means and what effect does it have on the system but I enabled it and still the same errors. These 2 errors keep alternating. I tried installing Win2k on a different partition but again after the setup got completed the same errors started coming up.

Can anybody explain this odd behavior, plz? I have tried whatever little computer hardware knowledge I have and have never faced with such a problem.

Thanks.

[#Hashx#]

Couple things here:

This might be a Virus are you using a Virus scanner?

Have you Changed settings in your Bios or has anyone else?

When you insert your xp cd try removing all the partitions and creating a new one then reformat again and see if its just a Errounous partition Fubar...

But mostlikely its your Bios

go to www.Asus.com type in your motherboards name and download the lastest Bios, it will create its own Bootable floppy disk....insert,folllow instructions, this should Overwrite any thing that could possibly give you this error...

This is a new hard-drive so I don't thinks its a Hardware problem.

since this was a media file it might have been infected with something, but That ReMAINs TO be seen so No worries... :cool:

I'd say that your knowledge of compters is sufficent enough to seek help then you should have no problem in curing this problem.

If this dosen't fix it have a couple o Beer's then wait for other users to pop in a help ya. :group:

[Mr. C]

couple of articles worth looking at;

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=275180

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q256/8/41.ASP&NoWebContent=1

http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/8108/8108.html

may be useful

Are you using the latest BIOS available?

Have you tried removing 1 of the RAM modules just to see if this has any effect?

[aatitan]

Thanks for the guide so far... but I figured one problem ... that was the RAM ... turns out that the RAM module i was using was incompatible with my ASUS motherboard so went and got one whcih was ... but things arent anything new still... still i was getting the same "inaccessible boot device" errors...

So i tried reinstalling win2k in a new partiiton... but after the initial setup got completed fine it again stalled saying some error and blah... so removed all partitions but still nothing has happened...

Also i noticed that one of the cables that i got with my mobo ... had a smaller end than the usual ones that go into ones hdd/cd rom devices... and a part of the cable has been twisted before it goes into the end.... but i dont see it going anywhere at all... mabbe its in the SCSI cards but i am not using any ...

could someone enlighten me plz?

Thanks.

[maximus7001]

Ok, I have a few things to check out. Western digital hd's use no jumper at all when they are the only hd in the machine. Is there a jumper on it, if so what position is it in? If there is one, remove it.
Try wd diagnostic for windows
What kind of ram did you have and what kind is it now?
What kind of psu is in there?

What kind of chipset drivers are you using?
Is the os fully updated?

[aatitan]

Yeah there is a jumper on in the position of a master as shown on the HDD... I will remove that and see if any changes happen following this...

i have another update... yday nite all of a sudden the comp allowed win2k to install completely... but it still does not allow me to do anything with upgrading it to winxp... the one reason could be that my winxp could be bad... which follwoing my first experience cannot be right... but even so ... the problem with windows media player is still there... only this time the computer instead of rebooting just hangs the media player... i have tried using divx playa too. just recently the winamp also caused the comp to reboot after runnign fine for abt an hour ro so... and some file came up showing to be corrupted or some and so windows could not start... i havent tried doing anything with it since...

chipset drivers are VIA by ASUS... and the RAM that i was using earlier is essentially the same PC2700 DDR only that the model no. did not conform right iwht my ASUS mobo. I am currently using the compatible one from Centon... earlier it was Kingston.

PSU is 350 W one.

The last installation of OS (which happens to be working now!) was done using the one with SP3 on it.

[maximus7001]

Ok the jumper has to go as well as that psu. Is it a cheapie that came with a case? For that setup you need something like a thermaltake purepower 420 or higher. If not that wierd stuff is expected if not complete hardware failure.
Head over to via's hyperion page and grab the 4.51

[aatitan]

thanks for the latest drivers info for the chipset...

the PSU did come with the case... is it not enough? i mean why does my configuration require a higher psu?

thanks.

aA

[maximus7001]

the PSU did come with the case... is it not enough? i mean why does my configuration require a higher psu?

That's just the way things are. Especially with that mobo/cpu. A low wattage generic psu simply cannot supply enough juice to all the rails. Some people get lucky for a while. The same psu could work indefinately with a pIII setup with no issues because of the much lower 35w power needs compared to the 70w that a xp2500 needs.
example...
I would bet that if you tried your current setup with a non low end gf fx card, the issues would be much worse or possably not even be able to get to the bios or boot at all. This would be due to the fx needing 75w and a r9200 only needing 35w.

[aatitan]

Thanks for your help thus far maximus. Currently, the system is runnign stable except for the media player. I tried installing the medial player 8.1, but instead of stalling the computer rebooted. So i changed the AGP aperture size in bios to 64 (from the earlier 128) and the problem seemed to have been sorted out for it ran the firts movie (a .dat file!) perfectly. but when i tried using it with a divx it rebooted again. (i have not gotten any new power supply and am using the 350W one!).

any ideas?

aA