AGP440.SYS Win XP lock up

[BluceRee]

Pardon me, but this is going to be a bit lengthy.
My system specs NOW:
1 x Shuttle HOT 649a Dual BX Slot 1 (SECC2) motherboard
I have the latest and last bios rev AS023 installed.
1 x Micron PC133 256MB ram located in DIMM bank 0/1.
1 x Generic Intel ethernet card for cable modem interface
1 x Sound Blaster 32.
1 x IBM 60GXP 60GB hard drive partitioned into 3 x 20GB.
2 x Celeron 333a's (PPGA, in MSI 6905 Rev 1.0 Slotkets.)
1 x Inno 3D Tornado GeForce 2 GTS.
1 x Plextor 8x,20x CDR/CDROM. (SCSI, using motherboard's built in SCSI controller in ULTRA WIDE mode.)
Windows XP rev 5.1.2600

The upgrades I'm trying to perform:
1. Swap the current celerons with 2 x P3 1000EB CPUS (FCPGA, 133MHz FSB type, step code SL4C8.)
2. Swap the old slotkets with 2 Powerleap PL-iP3/T's.

Upon making this change to the new processors, my system will crash while booting. Under SAFE mode, my system hangs up while loading AGP440.SYS every single time. I am unable to DISABLE AGP440.SYS in the Win XP recovery console, as Win XP claims it can't find the service.
I have formatted my Primary partition for a totally clean install, and it STILL crashes at AGP440.SYS. The Slotkets provide the correct pinouts and voltage for these chips. I have tried running the chips at 66MHz FSB, but the same crash occurs. My motherboard supports an FSB upto 150MHz, with a 1/4, 2/3 PCI, AGP divider.
THIS IS DEFINITELY A SOFTWARE ISSUE, as the BIOS properly identifies the chips, and even correctly calculates their speed properly. VGA mode crashes while starting up as well. NOT A SINGLE OPTION IN THE SAFE MODE MENU WORKS PROPERLY without leading to a crash.
I swapped my AGP video card with an older PCI video card, an STB Velocity 3D card (S3 Virge VX chipset.) upon restarting, once again, all the options in safe mode crash, though this time it seems to get to a light blue screen, the screen just before windows would load, then it crashes. I tried to reinstall Windows XP with the PCI card, but it kept crashing. One such crash lead to this report:
STOP: 0x00000007F 10x00000011, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000.

There are literally 400+ people with this problem on the hardware forums of Google. The problem occurs only on WIN 2000 / WIN XP systems. This isn't a video card 3rd party driver issue, since it NEVER even gets a chance to start WinXP. I am going to try to disable AGP with DxDiag tonight, and I'll post my results. This is VERY FRUSTRATING as the only thing I'm adding is processors. I had read somewhere that the problem may be attributed to way the driver uses the CPUs cache, P3's have Full speed cache, while old Celeron 1's have 1/2 FSB speed cache. So, I tried to boot with all external/L1/L2 cache disabled, same crash happens though. I AM DESPERATE FOR HELP, as everyone's answer is "update the bios" which I've already done, but to no avail. I'm game for any fix, no matter how complex.


Thank you for your time in reading this
Dave.

 

[Guest_imported]

Did you ever get an answer to this question? I am having the same problem and I have reached the point where I cannot even reload Win2K because it stops at 'Starting Windows 2000 Setup' and just sits there.

 

[BluceRee]

Unfortunately, NO GO. It simply doesn't work, people suggested:

Go to BIOS, TURN OFF ACPI. Next use your BOOTABLE WINXP CD
and re-install windows xp. After it detects your hardware, and reboots, go back to the BIOS and turn ACPI ON. Next reboot and let windows install.

This didn't work for me, but what the heck, give it a try.

--Bluce

 

[Guest_imported]

This is an old topic but I am sure people are still experiencing the problem (as I have within the past week). I have found a way of getting XP to boot and hope that my solution helps people with the same infuriating problem.

I have not updated my hardware, but was tinkering with the innards for a little while the same day it stopped booting. I think this is a coincidence since it was working for hours afterwards and a couple of reboots too.

I was looking in(not touching) the bios when it froze. I waited a while then reset the computer. This is where the problem started. It would not boot.

I foolishly did many of the things that others did to resolve the problem as there seems to be many theories on what the problem is. I lost 30Gb of data in the process.

Luckily it was not my boot drive that was formatted automatically by my recovery console, but the recovery console would not help in any case. I resolved the problem by getting in to DOS and copying (overwriting) the file c:\windows\repair\SOFTWARE into c:\windows\system32\config\ .

I was then able to boot XP and am in the process of sorting all my software problems now. I believe there is a hardware problem too though, and am looking in to this.

Be aware that this file was from when I originally updated to XP so all the settings were from the day of install.

 

[ceh4702]

The Geforce4 MX440 is not on the XP compatability list. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.