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Pragma · 01-18-2006, 09:08 AM

Or: I'll bet Geek Squad couldn't fix this...

My girlfriend's parents had Windows 98 on their computer, and they recently purchased an iPod to discover it doesn't play nicely with Win98. So they asked me to help them upgrade to the modern world. Their computer was pretty good - a friend of a friend built it for them back in 99 or 00, it was top of the line then. A P3 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, etc.

They'd gone ahead and gotten a copy of XP Professional, so I helped them back up all of their data and then gladly volunteered my time to help format the machine and then install XP, figuring it shouldn't be too difficult. Boy was I wrong.

The installer went fine - it formatted the harddrive, copied the files over, rebooted, and ran through XP's graphical installer. Then it rebooted to go into Windows. While at the XP loading screen, it locked up the computer. Power button, reboot into safe mode. Safe mode worked - but couldn't really figure out what was wrong. Did this a few times to ensure that there was something going wrong in the "normal" mode of XP stopping the machine from loading.

I figured it was probably a third party driver, as I'd run Memtest86 and ensured there was no bad RAM. I downloaded all of the updated drivers for their video card, sound card, etc. - still no luck. At this point, I was getting very frustrated - and didn't have a clue. So I started turning on all of the event logs and snooping around to see what the problem was.

I noticed a strange error in the system event log, noting how the ACPI BIOS was attempting to write to bad memory segments and the OS was punishing it (I'd post the actual error message, but I forgot it - I may have it at home). I searched around on Google and the general response to that message was that the BIOS on the motherboard was too old and was using an outdated control language that was incompatible with XP.

Thankfully, the motherboard wasn't a noname (A-Bit VH6T) and I found an update for it. Reflashed the BIOS, and everything worked. The error message went away, Windows booted up properly, etc. I've installed XP hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, on all sorts of outdated hardware. Hell, I even installed it on an old Pentium 133MHz laptop. I've never before seen that error message - or heard of a BIOS needing to be updated to support XP. But now I have - and I won't forget that lesson any time soon.

Anyone else ever had weird problems like this installing XP/any OS? I'm always interested in learning from others' pain

01-18-2006, 09:08 AM	#1 (permalink)
Pragma I am Winter Born Location: Alexandria, VA	A fun problem to solve... Or: I'll bet Geek Squad couldn't fix this... My girlfriend's parents had Windows 98 on their computer, and they recently purchased an iPod to discover it doesn't play nicely with Win98. So they asked me to help them upgrade to the modern world. Their computer was pretty good - a friend of a friend built it for them back in 99 or 00, it was top of the line then. A P3 800MHz processor, 512MB RAM, etc. They'd gone ahead and gotten a copy of XP Professional, so I helped them back up all of their data and then gladly volunteered my time to help format the machine and then install XP, figuring it shouldn't be too difficult. Boy was I wrong. The installer went fine - it formatted the harddrive, copied the files over, rebooted, and ran through XP's graphical installer. Then it rebooted to go into Windows. While at the XP loading screen, it locked up the computer. Power button, reboot into safe mode. Safe mode worked - but couldn't really figure out what was wrong. Did this a few times to ensure that there was something going wrong in the "normal" mode of XP stopping the machine from loading. I figured it was probably a third party driver, as I'd run Memtest86 and ensured there was no bad RAM. I downloaded all of the updated drivers for their video card, sound card, etc. - still no luck. At this point, I was getting very frustrated - and didn't have a clue. So I started turning on all of the event logs and snooping around to see what the problem was. I noticed a strange error in the system event log, noting how the ACPI BIOS was attempting to write to bad memory segments and the OS was punishing it (I'd post the actual error message, but I forgot it - I may have it at home). I searched around on Google and the general response to that message was that the BIOS on the motherboard was too old and was using an outdated control language that was incompatible with XP. Thankfully, the motherboard wasn't a noname (A-Bit VH6T) and I found an update for it. Reflashed the BIOS, and everything worked. The error message went away, Windows booted up properly, etc. I've installed XP hundreds, maybe even thousands of times, on all sorts of outdated hardware. Hell, I even installed it on an old Pentium 133MHz laptop. I've never before seen that error message - or heard of a BIOS needing to be updated to support XP. But now I have - and I won't forget that lesson any time soon. Anyone else ever had weird problems like this installing XP/any OS? I'm always interested in learning from others' pain __________________ Eat antimatter, Posleen-boy!