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The best all intergrated motherboard for my mother?

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  • The best all intergrated motherboard for my mother?

    hello guys,

    I need some advice... Ok here goes...

    I need to get a motherboard that has all is all intergrated. The reason is ...I will be sending this board to my Mom which has little to none experience with pc building. So I will have to walk her through the installation proccess (she does have another pc).

    She has a complete pc that I shipped to her before christmas (x-mas gift) and now it keeps locking up under win98 and winXP.

    The system is as the following...

    Abit Kt7a-raid motherboard (bios=ww)
    256 mb of infeneon 133mhz Sdram (1 chip)
    40 gb Maxtor hd (ata 100)
    US Robitics Winmodem (PCI)
    Soundblaster AWE 64 (ISA)
    Enermax whisper power supply (350 watt)
    Ati Xpert 128 video (PCI)

    and of course the other stuff...(floppy..cd-rom....etc.)

    The problem with that current setup is that is keeps locking up under win98 and win XP. When I first shipped the pc out it had a Evil King Voodoo3 w/tv out video card (AGP) and Win98. It worked fine when it left here but now it has problems. She installed WinXp over 98 to see if this would solve any problems. During the compatibiliy test it said that the 3fdx might have some problems and she installed it anyway..After XP was loaded and the problems were still there she thought that maybe the video was the problem...so she got the Xpert card and the same results followed.

    What I have done to help here it made sure that there was no conflicts and made sure that there was no deviced with problems..Under WinXp. all the drivers appeared to be loaded. I even had her updated all the drivers. I flashed the bios back down to WW (this use to be my mobo) which is what I ran with it and had no problems. I followed a guide on how to place the cards in order so nothing will share any IRQ's. I had her set the fail-safe defualts in the bios and made sure that the CPU speed was correct. I made her double check the jumper on the hard drive which was correct. I made sure that all the old driver were all the way unistalled (from old video card). I tried to load the the latest 4-in-1 drivers for Xp...(the hard drive has be reformatted since then and is not running any 4-in-1 drivers)....

    This pc even locks up when running through scan disk....the problem seems to happen on its own (nothing triggers it)

    It is weird cause she ran Sandra soft's system benchmark all the way through with out locking up.

    I would say it locks up every 15 mins or sometimes she can go longer...

    Anyone have any Ideas or can recommend a good all-in-1 motherboard?

    due to the nature of this thread I am going to copy parts of this thread in to the "Motherboard" thread to see if anyone can help me resolve the problem..

    Thanks for reading this post!

  • #2
    How far do you want to take this? I mean, you could get a basic board with simple onboard sound, video etc... or you could try for an nForce board with onboard gf2mx and so on...

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    • #3
      Well, I would like to get the least troublesome board without lacking the performance. Trouble free is more than important performance honestly.

      This will be for my Mom and Basicly all she really does is surf the web. She does have the 2 video cards mentioned above..so nforce is not really needed only if the price is close to the leading board.

      I am sorry I should have mention this above....I have walked her through so much stuff I get myself confused some times..

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      • #4
        what did you need on the board?

        -sound
        -video
        -NIC
        -modem (riser?)
        -anything else

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        • #5
          hmmm...the only thing that is really needed is the on board audio which alot of boards have... cause I can transfer the other peripherals out of the pc to see if the problems happens...

          I would not need a NIC
          video is optional and so is the modem/riser
          I am kinda stuck between how much more for the onboard video and riser

          but then again if there is a stable motherboard that has everything then I would just like to replace to whole works and prey to god it is not the hard drive causeing the problems

          Comment


          • #6
            If you're gonna replace the board (I did give a recommendation in the Motherboard thread), then take a look at that Gigabyte board I just tested out. It is not designed as a performance board, but has built-in sound and a low sticker price. It also uses the VIA KT266A chipset.
            Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill
            My Toys

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            • #7
              Wooh Darth...I see you got more out of that 1ghz chip....did that Epox board help that out or did you get better cooling? Sorry about "off the topic" but I am amazed! Good job!

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              • #8
                Thanks. :)

                The better performance was due to the newer chipset. While the KT133A is a pretty solid setup, the KT266A is awesome. I have also nearly doubled my overall memory speeds and bandwidth with the DDR memory that it supports.
                Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill
                My Toys

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                • #9
                  Great! I am glad to hear that! I went from that abit kt7a to the MSI kt266a-ru board with a 1.4ghz AYHA? (something like that ..ha!) ..I never tried to overclock it yet

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                  • #10
                    I have never had a problem with the i810E chipset with a Celeron for a simple office-like system. The onboard video and sound are acceptable (except for games), and many i810E boards have onboard LAN as well.

                    The Intel chipset also means rock-solid stability, and I can't see a better option for a simple, web-surfing box :)
                    What came first - Insanity or Society?

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