Hi all,

I'm trying to fix a computer for my Mother-in-law. I know, I know, that's my first mistake :)
It's some cheap system from an auction site she got over a year ago and never did get to work. I put off working on it this long, but finally got hooked. It has a cdrw, 20G Maxtor, and an AMD 1000 duron. IThe OS install locks up EVERY time, always in a different spot, tho, and it's not a heat prob. t's a pcchips M810?? board, I really think that's the problem, but I can't seem to tell what version of the m810, it has some other letters or numbers behind it and I need to flash the bios w/ the right version can ne1 help?

thanks!
Jme

okay, I found out the model # and flashed the bios, but that changed absolutely nothing, it still locked up when trying to install OS. Can anyone help with this, or should I just blow a few of the M-I-Ls bucks on a new board, and who knows of a cheap one for an athlon 1 Gig duron? (200 fsb)
thanks!

It's probable bad RAM.

okay qwerty, I'll swap some of my good ram in, thanks for the answer! I gotta hit the sack, but I'll be back tomorrow w/ an outcome.

I have the PCChips M830 in one of my PC's and while I have been lucky a lot of people have had a lot of problems with it. I only have a minor reboot issue. I know the M810 wasn't any better. I agree, try different RAM 1st but if you decide it is the board check TigerDirect. I bought a Soyo 7IS2 mobo with a Via C3 CPU package for $49.95 plus IL sales tax (which you wouldn't have to pay) and shipping. Only thing so far with it is that on boot up it claims it can' find the USB keyboard, instead of beep codes it has recorded error messages so you here a female voice telling you "A keyboard has not been detected". I have USB support enabled and the keyboard works just fine. Other than that it works great. It's a socket 370 so the MIL's Duron wouldn't work but they have a lot of good Socket A boards to choose from as well. They also had a 950Mhz C3 available with it for about $20 more as I recall. Not as fast as a 1Ghz Duron but they are supoosedly cool running and very stable, more than good enough for the M-I-L. ;) I wouldn't recommend another PCChips (aka ECS) though.

How about this gigabyte board? GA-7VKMLS It looks like it has everyhting I need, it suports pc133, and has on board sound (I think), LAN, and a vga out. This should do, eh? I can get it for less than $60 shipped.

I don't have any personal experience with it, do a Google search and see if it has a website totally dedicated to the problems people have with it like my PCChips M830 (aka ECS K7S5A ). There will always be somebody that had a problem with something but if you find very few then I'd give it a shot.

PCChips boards certainly have issues, and if your going that route, I'd stick with an ASUS board. They can be had at newegg for a few bucks more. I'd wouldn't rule out the hard drive either, at the very least boot into DOS and run some sort of disk checking utility. Maxtor has a few on their website that can run off a floppy. At the very least try windoze scandisk, because i've seen windoze os's miss bad sections of hard drives when scanning them install an os.

okay nightheart, I will do that first, and thanks for the advice hippie, If the hard drive checks out, then I'll take your advice.
Thanks!
James