Upgrade from ME to XP - BIOS problem?

[Ken Q]

Hello all!

I'm new to the forums here; the tides of chance have driven me here, alas!

I'm running an HP Pav 9795C, 1.4 GHZ Pentium IV with the 850 chipset, 640 Meg RAM, DVD, CD-RW, M-Audio Delta 66 sound card with Omni breakout box, OS is Windows XP Home Edition with SP1.

Now this box originally had Windows ME. Several months ago I attempted to install a NVIDIA Ti 9200 graphics card. After installing the driver I had a fatal crash; lost the OS as well as other apps. Since HP doesn't send a Windows ME CD with it's PCs, and since I didn't want to reformat with irrecoverable data still on the hard disk, I decided to get another hard drive and clean install XP, start fresh.

After the installation of XP I tried again to install the graphics card. While it didn't trash the hard drive this time, it still did not work (I got either a black screen at startup or a mosaic-effect screen with multi-colored dots and a black dotted line running vertically down the screen, which locks up.) I decided to dedicate this particular computer to a digital audio recording facility.

Time passes and I decide I miss gaming, so I try again. This time I also try to install an ATI Xtasy 9200 SE just in case its an incompatibility issue with NVIDIA. Exactly the same outcome.

Ok, so I think it's maybe a BIOS problem, so I download an updated BIOS, but when I try and flash it, it doesn't work (has to be done from DOS, not from inside Windows. When I use the startup floppy it does not allow me to change from A drive to C drive, and when I do it inside XP with a command prompt it says it cannot do it due to a memory manager running or somesuch)

Seeing that two different graphics cards were attempted with similar results (the drivers were the latest available for both cards), I can only assume its either an XP issue or an ME to XP issue with the BIOS, since the HD was completely clean and unformatted before I installed it. I've looked on HP's site, Microsoft's site, NVIDIA and ATI's sites, and there doesn't seem to be any similar incidents to mine.

Thoughts, suggestions or comments greatly appreciated!

Thanks!!

[snowmonkey]

Wow, I haven't seen anybody explaining their problem as good as you did,, Nice...

Getting back to your problem,, I guess flashing the BIOS to latest REV would help but I don't know why would you want run the program from hard drive... Just boot with any boot disk and then at the prompt insert the disk with flash program and the BIOS update in it and run it from disk not hard drive, usually flashing program fit on a floppy. The reason you can't access the C drive is because you don't have NTFS boot disk.. anyway ,, flash the BIOS and give us an update.


cheers

[Ken Q]

Thanks for the quick reply!

And yes, there is success!!

What I did was just about what you suggested... I ended up unzipping the flash exe and taking the individual files on the floppy with the boot info. When I got the A: prompt I typed BIOSUPDT and there ya go.

My trail was not without a bump or two, though. After flashing, I got a checksum error, so I set the original default settings. Once that was done the system ran slow as molasses, did another restart and it ran well again, seems the OS had to chew on the new BIOS for a bit. Then I went with the ATI card, since it was 128 meg, installed the drivers, and BAM! Crashed again!

After a good cry and a shot of Jagermeister I decided to start in VGA mode and poke around a bit. I ended up re-downloading the latest Raedeon driver, and hey presto! I was back in business. Guess its not only how you install something but in what order you install as well.

Thanks again for the help!

PS - I'm absolutely wowed by the ATI demo "island"! Looking forward to some gorgeous gaming!