[James Sullivan]

I have an ASUS P4S8X and installed XP. I get the message:
ERROR - can't write ESCD at the end of DOS just before windows.

This seems to be an old problem for ASUS when I search the internet with that error phrase. People are replacing BIOS chips and doing backflips to get rid of it. Some people had to get new boards.

My system does not freeze. It is running. Is there any harm in this message?

I loaded their latest BIOS 004 and went back through 002 and 03a and it made no difference.

ASUS is not going to be of much help.

There is a Driver on a Sony site that says it will get rid of this but when I execute it I get a message that my board did not identify itself properly. Maybe they check the board ID and the P4S8X is too new to get a hit.

 

[Viper]

Might be something wrong with the BIOS flash chip. Load the setup default and see if it helps. If not you may have a bad chip.

 

[Jethro]

I have XP, the very same board and the very same error, but everything seemed to work fine, until...

One sunny day I bought another disk (120Gb) :winkgrin: , I instaled it as slave, created 3 partitions, formatted, copied all my crap (always whistling happily), and when I removed the first disk and booted from the XP CD to install a fresh system on the new disk, the partition list was something like:

-: Partition 0 117xxxxxx bytes total (0 bytes free)


and I couldn't install. :upset:
When I have both disks assembled and boot from the CD I will get all partitions from the old disk listed and only the second partition from the new disk.

I find this really weird and I'm completly clueless!

Can this be related to the "ERROR - can't write ESCD"?

Does anyone have an idea for me?

...help...

 

[James Sullivan]

After installing more hardware and software the message went away.

Now I have a new problem - see under video below - I have a garbled screen until windows XP starts.

I was right about ASUS - when i filled out a lennghthy form and submitted for support I ghet an error message. They found a way to get zero request.

I would never ever buy ASUS again. Flackey boards - no support.

 

[LoSRx7]

Has anyone figured out this problem???

Also did anyone experience any problem installing hardware??? It seems windows is taking a long time when it is trying to dectect hardware on first initial setup.

LoS

 

[Volt-Schwibe]

tech support?

i havent actually ever called a technical support line to ask for help with a product i had purchased. most of my problems are related to the ***error 18*** when other people try to use my machine. i have nothing too special, but i havent really had trouble with much of it. i have an ASUS motherboard, and an AMD cpu, and they are working fine. i bought the 10$ stick of 128 meg pc-133 sdram, and i have had all kinds of people try to say that is my problem, but it never is. i use sis video cards, and have never had a problem. i have a generic sound card that is running off of a sound blaster driver, works lovely. i have a Best data modem and a netgear ethernet adapter, no problems there except when the install floppy for the ethernet card died. what resulted was me piecing together an installer disk, and it doesn have everything my pc asks for, but it works anyway. my keyboard is older than dirt, and i wont even get into what it came from. i have a 10$ optical mouse from radio shack, and it is the best mouse i have ever had. i am using a case from a 80386 that i modified and painted, although i put a 400 watt supply into it, i think it 400 watts anyways. i dont have trouble with cd drives, or floppy drives, but hard drives are a problem always. but basically my pc is usually in good working order, unless someone else thinks they can fix it. hehe. but i dont care if they do have tech support or not, because i love the board i have. and i am not sure why yours wont send the report, after reading this:

I was right about ASUS - when i filled out a lennghthy form and submitted for support I ghet an error message. They found a way to get zero request.

i went and tried to send that form, and mine went through no problem. i am not sure the problem is ASUS, as they provided an adaquate means of contacting them. also not everyone is going to be pleased with every motherboard.


BoB