Allabaster

Hey all, first post on this forum, though I've skulked around a bit to try and solve my problems.

Alright, backstory first: Acquired a copy of Windows Vista Business edition through my college and the MSDNAA program. I am going to post my issues on that in a bit in the OS Forum, but suffice to say, there have been 'issues' involving a BSOD. So I did some research and found that while my PC can handle it, I didn't know if the BIOS could or not.

After some looking and poking around inside my case, I have learned my BIOS is an AMIBIOS P4C81106 Revision 1019, by American Megatrends, on an Asus P4C800 Deluxe Motherboard. I did some looking on the ASUS website for a newer BIOS revision, but the latest one was a beta from 2005, and it jumped from the 1016 revision to said beta, which was a 1021.005 revision iirc. I dug around on the American Megatrends website, but couldn't find any real BIOS support, other than a link to the Asus page, and a link to a website called E-support. So I shot off an email to esupport and got a call back today. They claim to have the BIOS revision I need, but they wanted 50 dollars for the update, which I am not willing to pay.

So my question to you folks is as follows: Does anyone know what the latest version of the BIOS is for my AMI P4C81106 BIOS chip, and if so, where can I get it? I am desperate for this because it is the only thing I can think of that is causing Vista to fail on my PC.

Here's the link to the Vista issues: Vista BSOD
My system specifications are:
P4C800 motherboard with an AMIBIOS P4C81106 BIOS chip at revision 1019
Intel P4 3.2 GiHz HT CPU
GeForce 6800 GT 256 MB Graphics Card, AGP 8x
Seagate Barracuda 250 GiB SATA drive
Maxtor 120 GiB SATA drive
Maxtor 250 GiB IDE drive
4 GiB RAM
Unknown PSU.

manic

Afaik that board should be ok for vista. When you installed vista
was that on a clean hdd, ie formatted with something like killdisk?
Remnants of the of the old os could be giving you the problem.
Make sure bios is configured properly.
Just read your other post, did you go into bios and tell it to treat
sata drives as ide? Insure raid is disabled. Make sure to install
mobo drivers...Is the sata drive plugged into the sata port or the
raid port, it should be in the sata port.
Another thought you may have to get updated chipset drivers for
vista. I believe those are the 875intel chipset drivers.

Allabaster

" Afaik that board should be ok for vista. When you installed vista
was that on a clean hdd, ie formatted with something like killdisk?
Remnants of the of the old os could be giving you the problem.
Make sure bios is configured properly.
Just read your other post, did you go into bios and tell it to treat
sata drives as ide? Insure raid is disabled. Make sure to install
mobo drivers...Is the sata drive plugged into the sata port or the
raid port, it should be in the sata port.
Another thought you may have to get updated chipset drivers for
vista. I believe those are the 975intel chipset drivers."

-It was on a clean HDD, just had got shipped in from Newegg the day before, I had formatted it using the Seagate Disk Wizard tool from their website.
-The BIOS is set up to treat SATA as IDE, RAID is disabled, dunno about the mobo drivers yet, the SATA drives are in the SATA port (When I was installing the drives initially, I had that as a problem as why they wouldn't be detected, but after about a half hour, got it sorted out so that the XP drive (the 120 GiB SATA) was the boot drive again.
-When you say Chipset Drivers, you mean for the motherboard? or the CPU?

manic

chipset, not cpu they are the 875p drivers, I did some reading on
this, boy what a hassle. You will have to go to intels website to see
if there is a updated driver for your chipset using vista. If they do
have the driver that is good. Asus has nothing as far as updates for
that board. But then you will have to find drivers for your onboard
lan, and onboard sound.,that support vista. Ive read that if you can
get vista up and running and online it will update itself, but if there
isnt a ethernet driver it cant do that.
First thing I would do is make sure that you can get a updated chipset
driver for vista, go to intel for this.
If they provide one then I would buy a nic card that is vista compatible.
Then I would buy a soundcard that is compatible, disabling those things
in bios first. If you cant get the chipset driver I would throw in the towel
and go back to xp.

Allabaster

So how would I figure out what my chipset is? Would it be listed in my POST screen? Or on my board itself?

manic

Its the intel 875p. It should be on the box the mobo came with,
or the manual. For more info about your situation do a google.
Type in p4c800-deluxe vista compatibility issues. Ton of information.
Good Luck!!

dai

only start one thread for a problem
what are the psu details from the label on the side of the psu
use the 1021 beta bios