Need help getting this old MSI 815EP Pro to work with 2k/XP
Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 10:45 pm
I'm using audioTester (www.audiotester.de) to measure speaker parameters and WinISD/BassBox Pro to model the speakers for the 2.1 setup i am building for myself. Unfortunately my main C2D computer's onboard sound got fried (static discharge, i never believed it till i saw it happen), and the only other computer i can use for this purpose is an antique Pentium-MMX 200 @ 292MHz with 96 megs RAM and SoundBlaster 16 ISA. It works okay for basic measurements but when i get to modeling (and i also have some new progs i'm wanting to try), it doesn't cut it. But at least it can boot to a usable copy of Windows 2000. Btw, i got its BIOS fixed to recognize large HDDs a couple years ago, courtesy of this forum as well. Thanks again guys!
I have two new HP Pavilion AMD dual-core laptops but i cannot use them for this purpose - the input jack is a combined mic/line input and would blow up if i connect the amplifier outputs to it (which is needed for doing measurements with the audioTester program).
So i have gotten this PIII machine i want to use for my measuring software. I'm having tons and tons of grief trying to get this thing together. It's a MSI 815EP Pro with the latest BIOS v3.3. CPU is at 733MHz, RAM 2x 64MB running at 133MHz, Riva TNT2 AGP 32MB, Seagate 20GB. I have tried four 128MB sticks that are tested good in a friend's AMD, but the board doesn't like any of them and just spits out memtest errors like crazy so i'm stuck with only 128MB. But that's the least of my issues.
I cannot get it to install Windows 2000 or XP or 2003 properly no matter what i do. It usually hangs when starting the GUI setup. I got 2003 eXPerience Edition to install a couple times, with drivers and everything (and ACPI enabled), but upon reboot Windows self-destructed. Either NTLDR is missing, or it scrolls and scrolls and scrolls the line forever, safe mode shows it hangs when loading ACPI drivers. I have tried every option possible - swapped HDD, swapped cables, swapped video card with ATi Rage PCI, replaced capacitors, swapped power supplies, disabling ACPI/PnP, UDMA, increasing voltage, lowering CPU/RAM speed, everything. It just doesn't want to work. Today no matter what settings all Windows versions i've tried hung up at the GUI part of the setup. I'm going to swap the CPU too tomorrow to see what that does.
I haven't tried Windows 98 or ME but i have no use for those as audioTester will only run on NT and higher. I'm betting there's some silly BIOS bug that i cannot seem to find a workaround for, maybe you can help? This mobo does have some pretty nice features so i would like to get it working.
I have two new HP Pavilion AMD dual-core laptops but i cannot use them for this purpose - the input jack is a combined mic/line input and would blow up if i connect the amplifier outputs to it (which is needed for doing measurements with the audioTester program).
So i have gotten this PIII machine i want to use for my measuring software. I'm having tons and tons of grief trying to get this thing together. It's a MSI 815EP Pro with the latest BIOS v3.3. CPU is at 733MHz, RAM 2x 64MB running at 133MHz, Riva TNT2 AGP 32MB, Seagate 20GB. I have tried four 128MB sticks that are tested good in a friend's AMD, but the board doesn't like any of them and just spits out memtest errors like crazy so i'm stuck with only 128MB. But that's the least of my issues.
I cannot get it to install Windows 2000 or XP or 2003 properly no matter what i do. It usually hangs when starting the GUI setup. I got 2003 eXPerience Edition to install a couple times, with drivers and everything (and ACPI enabled), but upon reboot Windows self-destructed. Either NTLDR is missing, or it scrolls and scrolls and scrolls the line forever, safe mode shows it hangs when loading ACPI drivers. I have tried every option possible - swapped HDD, swapped cables, swapped video card with ATi Rage PCI, replaced capacitors, swapped power supplies, disabling ACPI/PnP, UDMA, increasing voltage, lowering CPU/RAM speed, everything. It just doesn't want to work. Today no matter what settings all Windows versions i've tried hung up at the GUI part of the setup. I'm going to swap the CPU too tomorrow to see what that does.
I haven't tried Windows 98 or ME but i have no use for those as audioTester will only run on NT and higher. I'm betting there's some silly BIOS bug that i cannot seem to find a workaround for, maybe you can help? This mobo does have some pretty nice features so i would like to get it working.