- Joined
- Jul 31, 2004
The most important issue is the memory. I have 4GB of nice Patriot memory. Works great in this board and my old DFI P965-S. Problem is that the BIOS on this MSI board, when it boots, tells me "3072MB okay". Boot into memtest86, I see 3072MB. Boot into Windows and run Everest, it shows me all four slots filled, each with the proper module. The board came with BIOS v1.2, which I updated to v1.3, as 1.3 claimed to support EPP memory settings (it doesn't, my memory would be running at 4-4-4-12 if it was, but it runs at the non-EPP 5-5-5-16). Both BIOS versions report 3072MB at bootup. Is there a memtest86 version that doesn't read the amount of memory from BIOS that I could try?
I've tried moving the memory around in different slots, reseating all of it, and have removed a module to make it really be 3072MB and put the remaining three modules in every possible slot combination in case of a bad slot. Nothing changes. Is this a known problem, or has MSI just not released a real BIOS for this board yet? The BIOS for a board that supports 64-bit CPUs should really have address space for more than 3GB of memory...
Second question is "How the crap do I install XP on a drive connected to the SATA?" I've used nLite to place every last RAID/SATA/AHCI driver on the CD that came with the board onto an XP install disc, and when I try to use it I get "couldn't find any drives to use" or whatever it says. Tried copying them to a floppy (yes, I still use my floppy drive) too. The only way I can install is if I put the SATA in IDE mode in the BIOS. Neither AHCI or RAID modes work.
I've tried moving the memory around in different slots, reseating all of it, and have removed a module to make it really be 3072MB and put the remaining three modules in every possible slot combination in case of a bad slot. Nothing changes. Is this a known problem, or has MSI just not released a real BIOS for this board yet? The BIOS for a board that supports 64-bit CPUs should really have address space for more than 3GB of memory...
Second question is "How the crap do I install XP on a drive connected to the SATA?" I've used nLite to place every last RAID/SATA/AHCI driver on the CD that came with the board onto an XP install disc, and when I try to use it I get "couldn't find any drives to use" or whatever it says. Tried copying them to a floppy (yes, I still use my floppy drive) too. The only way I can install is if I put the SATA in IDE mode in the BIOS. Neither AHCI or RAID modes work.
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