cannot load o/s on my Asus A7A266 mobo 1

[henrymalega]

I was going through my junk closet and found an asus a7a266 mobo still in the box that I had totally forgotten about. It's got the amd 950 on it. I put it together with an agp graphics card (ati rage pro turbo) generic sound card, 10-100 lan, etc.. I know this board was setup from the manufacturer for win98, but I dont have that o/s. I have 2000. I also found an old maxtor 6 gigger from an old ibm pc300gl, threw it all together, put in the cd and away it went. I erased the disk with the maxtor setup disk first, then tried to load the os. It made it past the post, scandisk, and when it said "starting windows 2000" it rebooted. then when it started to load the drivers it told me that i386 could not load/error code 7, the first time, then code 4 after that. I borrowed a 98se cd and the same thing. Can anyone assist? It's a matter of principal now. I've been chasin this thing around the room for 6 days now and would love to make it work. Thanks

 

[wolluf]

Sounds like some of your hardware is defective. Try disconnecting sound card, replacing graphics, if > 1 memory stick, use each on its own (otherwise find another).

Take it you have checked its all connected ok?

Might be worth using something like

http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm

to completely wipe the disk before starting & make sure you use 2k install partitioning tools to create/format the partition to install into.

 

[henrymalega]

thanks wolluf, it now hangs on the screen that says:"IRQ-not less-than-equal" ??? The manual states that the mobo starts at 66fsb. Do you think I should try with a pc100 stick of ram?

 

[Freestone]

http://www.techspot.com/reviews/hardware/asus_a7a266/a7a266-2.shtml

says "The A7A features three “normal” DIMMs for PC100 or PC133 memory. PC66 is no longer supported"

so it sounds like you're on the right track, especially since "IRQ-not less-than-equal" errors are almost always memory related.

 

[henrymalega]

I want to thank all you guys for the input..turns out that the agp card was faulty. I just threw a bunch of old stuff from my "junk pile" just to see what would happen...I also saw where someone said that the heat sink could be 180 out of position..Here is how it went.
started only with keyboard, mouse and vid card
installed 95
upgraded with 98se
upgraded to 2000 w/sp4
cool. I (we) now have an extra machine...I am now in the process of loading all the peripherals..sound, lan, modem, etc.
Just wanna say thanks to "all ya'll" for you informative and useful info..next thread will be from the new machine....