A8V + Windows 7?

[ChanceCoats123]

Well, I recently got a socket 939 system from a friend and I have an extra drive so I figured I just need to install Windows 7 on it and it'll be a nice little computer for my mom to use or as something just to browse the internet. I do have a few questions though.

1. Will this board be recognized by Windows 7 and allow me to get Lan updates and such? I checked the Asus site, but it only has up to Vista x64, while I need Win 7 x64.

2. Would a bios update be immediately necessary? I would assume not, but I just want to check.

Any and all answers or suggestions are appreciated.

-Chance Coats.

 

[trents]

My bet would be win 7 will have native drivers for the chipset.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Score. Thanks man. When I get my new Psu, I will migrate my current to that machine and give it a go.

 

[DragoXT]

Being someone that tested Win 7 RC on my old arse rig, vista 64 bit drivers are the thing to get since no win 7 drivers exist for those boards and likely will never. The default win 7 drivers are place holders and try to keep your compy from BSODing. Just install the vista 64bit drivers and all should be good.

If your bios isnt giving you issues, then dont upgrade it. Never had to update my bios just cause i installed a newer OS.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Sounds like a plan. Seriously, thanks guys. I have been so spoiled by newer tech. that I feel out of place working on a socket 939 board. Good thing someone has an idea of what to do.

 

[trents]

My experience is that if the OS post dates the hardware, it is likely the OS will have native drivers for the more common chipsets, as long as the hardware is still appropriate for the OS in terms of having enough muscle to handle it. How much ram are you going to be putting in that board? What about the video card? Win 7 is pretty graphics intensive so I wouldn't think the onboard video (if it has it) would be adequate.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

The specs of the rig are in my signature. It'll be 2gb's of crucial ram and an Nvidia Fx5200. I think it'll handle it just fine.

 

[boucher91]

i have an a8v that ran 7x64 rc just fine used drivers from via arena....

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Well this is great news. I'm not using the RC, so it should have even better support for older chipsets. What is via arena? A website?

 

[trents]

The specs of the rig are in my signature. It'll be 2gb's of crucial ram and an Nvidia Fx5200. I think it'll handle it just fine.

In your sig? All I see there is a PII 720 system.

 

[boucher91]

http://www.viaarena.com/Support.aspx
here ya go...

 

[trents]

Oh, yeah, now I see it in the amber type. Duh.

 

[CompuTamer]

Vista drivers usually work in 7. Genrally if there aren't drivers for 7, than 7 comes with the drivers

 

[Dr. McCoy]

Did an install with a Socket 754 system and it did fine so the 939 or any older system should be a cakewalk.
Yes, it had all the drivers I needed and installed them as the OS itself was installed, no prob.
Even tried it with a Socket A and yes, it worked fine - The machine once the install was done turned out to be quite "Snappy" in the way it ran.

Only issue I ran into so far are drivers for older Nvidia GPU's not installing correctly but the OS has drivers that do the job well enough, but not sure how they do when gaming - Haven't tried that yet.

 

[al3xis999]

Sounds good. Thanks mans

__________________
tadalafil
seroquel

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Oh, yeah, now I see it in the amber type. Duh.

Glad you found it. Hahaha.

Did an install with a Socket 754 system and it did fine so the 939 or any older system should be a cakewalk.
Yes, it had all the drivers I needed and installed them as the OS itself was installed, no prob.
Even tried it with a Socket A and yes, it worked fine - The machine once the install was done turned out to be quite "Snappy" in the way it ran.

Only issue I ran into so far are drivers for older Nvidia GPU's not installing correctly but the OS has drivers that do the job well enough, but not sure how they do when gaming - Haven't tried that yet.

Yeah I hear you on that one. I looked up the gpu drivers in the archive on Nvidia's website. I was surprised that they still had support for the card to begin with, but no Win7 anything so since I won't be oc'ing or doing much of anything on this machine, I will probably just use the default display drivers. Thanks for the advice.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Well I hate to bring this back up, but I am having issues getting this board to work correctly.

Currently, the hard drive I am using for this machine has windows xp 32 bit on it. I am using a Sony DVD-RW drive for optics (SATA).

I have a few problems:

1. It won't boot to xp from the hard drive. I have tried both the Promise Sata controller and the Via controller only to get the same "Disk read error" message.

2. I have the Sony drive plugged in and it is only found as a "Floppy device" on the Via controller and the Promise controller gives me an error to the degree of, "Warning - The bios detects a hardward ware configuration error. Check your system!". This makes it impossible to install an OS from this machine without a floppy. and IIRC, Win7 was too large for 1.44mb's. Would I be able to install the OS from my main rig and then migrate the hard drive alone?

 

[DragoXT]

If the xp install was done on another machine, then you will need to repair the OS to get it to work. Sometimes having an older IDE dvd drive is a good thing to have. The problem lies in that you are using a sata optical drive that im sure the bios doesnt support. If you have a USB optical device that might get you up and going. As for installing an OS on a hard drive attached to your main rig then swapping it, you will still need to repair the OS for it to work properly and more than likely to even boot into windows.

 

[ChanceCoats123]

Thanks for the advice. I actually do have a USB optical drive. Should I give that a shot?

Drago, you're the man! I found it (after an hour of searching) plugged it in, changed the boot priority and I'm currently installing Win 7! Thanks man!

 

[trents]

Chance, if you would have had more "history" (translated, "if you were an old bugger like me") you would have known it wouldn't work to try to install from a SATA drive on that old system. Ah, yes, there was once a technology called PATA. And there was something before Windows called "MS DOS". I remember those days, ah, yes! How did we ever get by then?

Let us know how the native drivers work out.