Hello ,

I have gone and bought a "refurbished" system from an online vendor www.compgeeks.com/ . They sell these systems and I have had no problem until now, they are essentially brand new with maybe one part that had been pulled and replaced. It is a HP Pavilion P4 2.53 Ghz 512 PC2100 Ram and 120 Gb hard drive with 4XAGP. Since it comes refurb, there is no motherboard manual, or real info on the system at all . It came with Win XP home pre-installed, no disc, but a HP_Recovery partition.  

My problem is that when I got the system replaced the cheap geforce 4mx with my GF4 Ti4200 128MB and ran some testing software and it seemed too slow. ( by the way I used the default XP drivers as I was just checking to see if it works properly) Now everything else with the card worked finejust too slow so I  check the hard drive and realize that it is 5400 WD 1200AB and so I replace it with a 120GB WD 1200JB , essentially the exact same drive except the speed is 7200. I install Win XP Pro on it, which I plan to upgrade to when this is all done,  with a fresh install. The problem is that after I install XP Pro, the onboard sound doesn't work anymore and the GF4 4200 is running even slower and when I check isn't in AGP mode ( it says PCI even though I have onboard AGP selected in the bios. Actaully initially it didn't even recognize my videocard at all when I first re-installed (said vga at 60hz and all adjustments were greyed out)until after my updated drivers were added. I checked the bios, Phoenix Award Bios V6.00PG but even though everything is set with onboard AC97 sound and AGP, it doesn't recognize them when the system finally comes on. Everything else seems to work fine, except of course anything that needs good graphic acceleration which doesn't work.

I am trying to find out what the manufacturer of  the motherboard is , it is a i845G-W627-6A69Vm4vc-00, but I cannot find out the name of the motherboard manufacturer by just looking at it (took everything out but the chip and PCI cards but didn't see any name or no and I do not want to take it out as the case is a *itch to work with. compgeeks.com of course has no support on the weekends, but somehow I doubt that they would be able to know since they seem to make and sell dozens of these things as they come in . All Hp's of various designs and Compaqs as well.

What I have done so far:

re-installed XP Pro again on the new drive after completely wiping the 7200 harddrive: no luck the exact same problem.

tried in vain to search for the motherboard online with available info (I tried to use CTBIOS ? that is supposed to tell you all about your motherboard, but it just flashes by in dos on XP: no luck this way.

I thought of burning the recovery partition on the original harddrive to disc, but it is 4Gb and I do not have a DVD burner.

I am back to square one with the original drive in with everything working , but just too slow for a P4 2.5 Gz with GF4 ti4200. this machine should kick a little ass, but doesn't because of the dog hard drive.

Would it be possible to install the second , faster , hard drive with the original one in and somehow copy over the info I needed from the slow to faster drive,to get it to boot properly on the newer hard drive ? Any help would be appreciated, I am not a beginner when it comes to software , but I am when it comes to motherboard and bios

Welcome to the Forum, JuneBug!

This is only meant to provoke some dialog but first of all, thank you very much for the very thorough analysis so far.  To be honest with you, this is very refreshing!

As for your problem, (and for the benefit of others 'spectating' on this thread), my first instinctive motherboard thought is: chipset drivers.  Can you tell us if it is a VIA, Intel, or SiS chipset (look at the chips on the mobo)?

Don't 'react' yet to the last comment above, let others chime in with their ideas before we 'crack this nut'!

As for your 'recovery partition', a decent ghosting utility like Drive Image 2002 can replicate (bit by bit) a partition in various levels of compression and can span CD-R/RWs - would that help you any?

I really don't think (and I read your post pretty fast) that your issues lie with your 5400 RPM hard drive. - I think it is chipset and/or BIOS related problem for now.

Your first goal is to determine 'what' board you're running with!

Thanks .

It is an intel chipset. That is about the only thing I can see on the board. I don't know if this helps , but it is one of those standard small ATX case motherboards. You know, 3 PCI 1 AGP onboard with 2 USB ports included and 2 DIM slots (PC2100) I will also note the date for the motherboard is 8/12/02.

Well I am holding out to see if I can crack this nut. I have obtained the following info.

Computer is: HP Pavilion Model DA166A-ABA 753C

Motherboard is Microstar Ms-6577 MPS version 1.4

Bios 8/12/2002-i845G-w627-6a69vm4vc-00

Chipset Intel 845 (Brookdale)

I got the info using a handy free program called Sisoft Sandra located at www.sisoftware.net. Had anyone ever heard of it before ? It is great at performing stress tests on machines and apparantly showing you just about anything you want about your current system.

the VERY FIRST thing you should do when you do a fresh reformat/reinstall on a system with the intel 845 series (http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/845/) is install

1. the intel inf or installation utility .see top righthand side here ->

http://www.intel.com/design/software/drivers/platform/845g.htm

2. then the intel application accelerator (this installs your motherboard drivers.

3. then ,for onboard sound,the realtek ac'97 alc650 from http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloads1-3.aspx?series=8&Software=True

all in the above order too. this will build the foundation upon which you build the system. without which all hell goes wrong with the PC