Advice please:

[moot]

Replacing a bunch of parts with:

Motherboard
-Asus P4B533-E or i845PE/i845GE,
Processor
-P4 2GHz
RAM
-512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM in two parts of 256
Video card
-Geforce4 4400

do you see any incompatibilities ?

[Hajo]

Moot

The site or Store you are purchasing the board should be able to tell you if the mobo is compatible with the chip physically.  Also ask if the BIOS is current or will need flashed with the cpu you've chosen.

Oh   fergot.   PC2700 is I believe DDR memory.....make sure mobo uses DDR.

[AKDejaVu]

A quick question... why the 2GHz P-4?

AKDejaVu

[moot]

I read the P4s were now easier to overclock than the previous pentium chips, and I've always seen them more robust in benchmarks than the Athlon chips. Wrong impression?
I had written down this list from http://arstechnica.com/guide/system/hotrod.html a month or two ago when the internet price looked best for the 2GHz. I will make this choice last when the rest is sure, but a quick look at pricewatch minimum prices makes 2.2 look best now -see price/speed below.

So I must look for the number of pins of the cpu and motherboard where it goes to match, the max DDR four digit number (2700) to be under the maximum of the motherboard, but is BIOS in the product specs usually? How hard is it to flash it myself if I must?
Why is a sock 478 P4 cheaper than the regular one?

This replaces a 4 year old PII400, 192MB of PC133 ram, a TNT2 ultra of 32mb and the OEM motherboard that came with it, if possible this next upgrade should last about as long.
I'll probably have to replace the case too, but unless you have some good favorites I will either custom make it myself or take one in retail that fits the parts once I've got them.

[Hajo]

Moot

It is not hard to "flash" the BIOs.  BUT!!!! if there is a power interruption, you shut off pc accidently etc. its time for a new mobo.  You'll have a nice doorstop though .  Really, go to your BIOS Type website.....see if there is an update available.  Download the readme file and follow instructions carefully!  If you've never done it before if there is someone handy who has, have them present.  If not....just be careful.  You'll usually dload the flash to a floppy drive.  Read the readme!

[moot]

Thanks Hajo!

[lord dolf vader]

fried my first one the other day. i think its just the bios. but really makes you feel bad .  i was using a asus 266c and had a i/o error from the floppy guess the brand new floppy disk was bad but had just formated and checked it(go figure). after the old was gone and befor the new was in .= dead board . bios chip is like 30 bucks. hope that fixes it .


reflashed another asus 266-e using the alt-f2 method and it went flawlessly. if your board supports this method or another like it go this way.

your put the correct bios on a otherwise empty floppy and during boot up you hit alt=f2 and it does the rest and restarts the comp even gave me a bios flashed ! message .

now my system is a athalon and probly totaly different. get your documentation and read read read. when you are sick of looking at the directions (and foot notes). then your ready.

[AKDejaVu]

I can understand that Hajo... but it seems that the P4-2.4 with the 100MHz FSB (or.. 400... whatever they call it) would be a better selection at $45 more.  You can probably OC the 2G to get close or even a little better... but you could OC the 2.4G even higher.  I believe its the last of the 100MHz processors which would seem to be the OCers best starting point.

AKDejaVu

[moot]

Replaced the mobo, ram and cpu, plugged back everything, but it sticks at the beginning of windows booting.
The error is halfway thru the 256 color bmp windows boot screen, the one after the pre-boot grey on black progress bar screen (where press there is F8 for advanced options >> safe mode etc menu for a short moment).

The BSOD says at the top- stop error (hex numbers)
In the middle a diagnostic message like- if first time seeing this message, check HDD for viruses andor errors, properly plugged in and terminated(?) etc,
At the end –BOOT DEVICE INACCESSIBLE; strange- it recognizes the HDD model etc from the BIOS and reads correctly enough of data from it to begin Win2k booting.
Sound familiar?

It won't boot on cd-rom (if I put it high in the BIOS boot priority list, same kind of message except it's right after the power-on screen (ram test, primary/secondary-master/slave listing), or it just hangs on what looks like DOS on the line "Booting from CD-ROM"), neither on a usb hdd that has no OS on it but a win2k CD in the drive, nor of course on any of the win2k HDDs I brought over, which give the error above ^ in the second paragraph.

[lord dolf vader]

are you just trying to boot it to the cd to format the drives ? have you set your bios to load setup defaults? does your mother board autodetect cd drives/ ide drives? you man have to go into bios to get them to recognize.

best i can think of till the real experts get here.

with all thos changes you are gonna need to start from a clean disk. i believe if you are attempting to boot a already active os on a disc from a previous hardware iteration of this comp you are asking for trouble. in my experience it works somtimes for a little while but never for long and that is if it works at all as it often dosent ( with the same errors you describe) if thats not the case sorry

[mrsid2]

You have to reinstall OS after a big change like you did.

[Hajo]

Moot........will the system boot to winows at all?   If it does it is a good idea to reinstall windows so that it can see the new instructions for the new ram and cpu.  Otherwise system will read the new cpu...but it won't run at that speed.  Windows when reinstalling will try and find all the drivers.  If it can't find them on the HD you might have to direct it to the proper folder.....if you have the drivers on disk use them if you can't remember location of the drivers.

If your PC is hanging on a black screen ( updating system configuration) and you can't get past that.....might be a good idea to reformat the HD and start out with a fresh system.  It's a pain, all programs and drivers will have to be reloaded or reinstalled.  But it sure is great to run with a newly formatted HD.  Specially after all the changes you have made.

Moot also with that new mobo you got a driver disk for the chipsets on the board.  That should be first thing to load after you get windows squared away.  Via Drivers, maybe new USB2.0 drivers....and Dx8.1 might be on the CD you got with the mobo.

Depends on what your mobo has

Good luck

[moot]

lord dolf vader:
yes, it didn't work at first but that's another problem, identified and solved.
yes, yes and yes, all three done and also tried seeing with another usb-hdd of someone else, clues pointed to same problem.

mrsid2:
I would have already except I'd not the OS cd anymore.

Hajo:
Yes, does a bit of the 256-color bmp progress screen of windows booting, maybe 1/3 of the way and BSOD.
Have the motherboard drivers on a windows CD, so I would have installed it already had windows worked without need to formatting.
it had hung on the black screen for a while for the sysconfig update, but only first time and since then what worried me was seeing it hang on all boot devices "Booting from CD ..." and then nothing; happened once or twice only.

Thanks for the help, will do all the standard windows fixing once it's fdsiked and reinstalled. Keep in mind I had 0 experience with DOS or bios before this except watching adults use it 15 years ago.

Only one more question, what does DDR2700 equal to in MHz?