Getting frustrated with XP/Acpi and Bios update

Hi everyone,

I´ve started to hate Epox and Microsoft recently. This is due
following:

I´ve had a stable system for almost one year now. It contains XP
1600+, Epox 8K9AI Motherboard with KT-400 chipset, 512 MB of PC 2700
(333) DDR, MSI GF460MX, 60 gb IBM Deskstar and Soundblaster Live
Value. The motherboard has integrated LAN. I was using the Windows XP
Pro.

Everything went sweet until I decided to upgrade my GF to Radeon 9700
card. Installation was a piece of cake and I had no problems
whatsoever. Then I noticed that 9700 was working only with AGP 4x and
there wasn´t an option in bios to increase it to 8x. So I checked the
Epox site (www.epox.com) and found that they had updated my MB´s bios
several times. The newest version of bios (4/7/2003) promised to fix
problems with AGP 4x/8x. So I downloaded it and flashed my bios with
this new one using alt+f2 method.

Flashing went correctly and I loaded the optimal setup in bios. Then I
tried to start XP - the screen went blue and text appeared that XP had
stopped my system down to protect the computer. I tried to start the
system couple of times, but ended up with the same result. I tried to
reinstall XP once to fix the problem, but that wouldn´t work either. I
was busy at the time and didn´t put too much effort on the matter. I
were also planning to buy a new system at the time.

Now, little over a month later, I assembled a new pc. I installed my
old 60 gb deskstar to it and copied the important files to my new pc,
wich worked fine. Then I started to build another system from my old
parts (with GF as graphics card). I thought that by formatting my old
hard disk and with clean install of XP, everything should work out
fine, but it didn´t.

I booted the system with XP cd, formatted the HD and started to
install XP. Everything went peachy until setup booted itself for the
first time. Again the same blue screen with error reports appeared.
Situation didn´t change with another startups. The error message is
evyrytime the same:

(The usual critical error texts)
and then technical part:

Stop: 0x0000007e (0xc0000005,0xf84ed29a,0xf894d180,0xf894ce80)

Acpi.sys - address F84ed29A Base at F84e9000, Datestamp 3b7d8550

After this I started to take problem seriously and tried all things
possible. I have:

- Flashed the bios again with the latest 7/4/2003 version (the same as
earlier)
- Disabled every possible device from my system (Soundblaster, Com
ports, LAN and USB devices) so only PS2 mouse, keyboard and GF are
left.
- The Acpi used to have IRQ 9 so I reserved it, forcing Acpi to use
IRQ 11
- Turned all power saving off from bios
- Tried the safe mode in startup

None of these helped. Error message stays the same. I even tried the
system with an older HD with Windows Me installed. It loaded normally
and windows started to install new devices - until it found Bios/ACPI
drivers and tried to install them. After finishing installation Me
found Bios/ACPI again and installed the drivers for it again, and so
on until the system hanged. The same happened with every new startup.
Driver installation was automatic so I couldn´t prevent it.

I don´t know what to do now. The bios version 4/7/2003 is still the
latest on Epox´s homepage, so it should be working correctly?

Thank you in advance,

Joni

Jouni Ruoska wrote:

Hi everyone,

I´ve started to hate Epox and Microsoft recently. This is due
following:

I´ve had a stable system for almost one year now. It contains XP
1600+, Epox 8K9AI Motherboard with KT-400 chipset, 512 MB of PC 2700
(333) DDR, MSI GF460MX, 60 gb IBM Deskstar and Soundblaster Live
Value. The motherboard has integrated LAN. I was using the Windows XP
Pro.

Everything went sweet until I decided to upgrade my GF to Radeon 9700
card. Installation was a piece of cake and I had no problems
whatsoever. Then I noticed that 9700 was working only with AGP 4x and
there wasn´t an option in bios to increase it to 8x. So I checked the
Epox site (www.epox.com) and found that they had updated my MB´s bios
several times. The newest version of bios (4/7/2003) promised to fix
problems with AGP 4x/8x. So I downloaded it and flashed my bios with
this new one using alt+f2 method.



Go back to the earlier bios. 4X to 8X AGP will never be seen in use. Check
out some benchmarks on this, it's not worth even flashing a bios to get 8X
support!
--

Stacey

Thanks guys for trying, but I´ve tried with three different bios
versions (8KA93407, 8KA93321 and 8KA93212) now and the problem has
stayed the same. So the bios propably isn´t causing the crashes?

Goddamit, do I have to buy old Windows version like 98 without this
stinkin ACPI to get my PC running?!?!

Anyway, thanks again for trying - any new guesses?

Joni

Go back to the earlier bios. 4X to 8X AGP will never be seen in use. Check
out some benchmarks on this, it's not worth even flashing a bios to get 8X
support!