Which is at Fault? Motherboard or Processor?

Flimber

http://www.badcaps.net/ ???

irnbru_2

Lawbag wrote:

And it still gives me the same result on the install.

Which motherboard and bios version?

Set your bios to the default values.

Do a default install.

CHR15

Are you trying the Advanced Install??

This will give you the options crux mentioned earlier.

Never did seem a ram issue.

Don't throw any more money at it yet. I still tend to think it's a SATA drive issue. Can you let us know if it is SATA or IDE??

If you don't know the difference, has it got the same type of cable connecting it as the CD/DVD drive (wide flat cable) or is it a little connector??

Go through the Install again but choose advance options, you should then be able to see the Drive, partition, format etc.

How about using the old drive for a while, unless it is completely U/S. It may be worth playing with just as a confidence check.


Also...
Did you remove the CD from the drive after the install??

Is you BIOS configured to recognise the Hard Drive.

Is your BIOS configured to boot from the hard drive

In your case the First Boot Device should be CD/DVD
Second Boot device should be Hard Drive (and this should be the correct model that you have fitted)

Lawbag_2

Im using IDE.

I put in a new harddrive - clean, and it was formatted as part of the install sequence.

The CD is clean, and no imperfections.

Ive resetted the BIOS

Ill look tonight at the capacitors on the motherboard. The badcap site mentions symptons which I have been experiencing lately. The machine tended to freeze during the playing of high-end games, leading me to assume it was the graphics card at fault. The MB is an MSI K2 Ultra MB, and the processor is an AMD 1800, 4 years old, and has been rather well behaved.

Lawbag_2

Follow up really to the original story.

I resetted the BIOS, and then loaded the BIOS defaults and it worked fine. I then loaded the high performance BIOS defaults and everything worked finer.

Formatted and installed Windows XP Pro and everything went exactly as it should. Whilst installing I checked the motherboard for the issues raised and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Windows XP loaded all okay and running smoothly with all drivers attached.

So I pushed the boat out and installed Windows Vista and, even though the machine is 4 years old, I got a rating of 3.2.

Damn pesky BIOS.

Thanks for all the advice...