KT4 Ultra Rocks!!

Well,,..With a new board and a few weeks of waiting my problems with my KT3 Ultra have been solved and i got a KT4 Ultra for 80$...It pays to take something back if it doesnt work...well heres the specs...:
KT4 Ultra BIOS V1.3
Athlon Xp 1700+ Thoroughbred @1.98Ghz..155FSB X 12.5/13.0. Set in bios. Vcore for cpu is at 1.675
GForce 4Ti 4600
20 Gig Maxtor HD
Antech SL400 Power Supply
Soundblaster Live 5.1
512 MB DDR PC2700 (as far as i know)
In the post it says memory is running at 333FSB but i dont think that is correct...but everything else runs good.
i didnt think i could get this 1700+ to run this high but it seems ok..stable no problems....Im still only getting high 11000 on 3dmark 2001 se but its because im using windows 98se...until i upgrade to Windows Xp ...and also buy either a new nvidia card or go Ati im probabley maxed out.the CPU also runs at around a nice low 40c in temp..under load..so it is running cool....i am really suprised....Thx agoian for all your help......MSI Rocks!!!!...
Also the 400watt power supply was the key to solveing alot of my problems...power is the key to haveing a good stable running system......300watts just wouldnt do it....atleast not for me...

its like i said i have had MSI for over 4 years and i know the boards well...this is by far the easyies board to tweak..and perfect.....do you really think windows xp will help my video performance.....i really only use this pc for video games ....thats what im working towards...a perfect game machine....its only 94$....is it worth it or should i just be happy?

Similar Messages

KT4 Ultra reboot before booting

Ok, this is going to be long, but I'm hoping one of the details will give somebody a clue. I'm going to stick in details I don't think are relevant even.
The components relevent to this story:
KT4 Ultra Motherboard
Addtronics 300W power supply
Athlon XP 2400+ cpu
Windows XP SP1
2 seagate 120gig SATA drive in a mirrored RAID config
A cheap off brand UPS.
This machine had been up and running about 9-10 months on the current install. The machine was ROCK solid. I ran this machine 24/7 with reboots only for getting rid of adware or stuff like that. Never did I see a blue screen or any bad behaivor. And I never even bothered to cycle the power during this time. Sounds good right?
Well I'm doing some work on the carpeting in my office, so I shut it down and moved the machine to a different room. Well I got everything plugged in and powered it up, and to my surprise it started doing a chkdsk (the in boot chkdsk) since it wanted to, I let it go. Well as I watched I could see tons of errors coming as I'm watching this many of the files where clusters were being repaired were in the Windows/system32 directory. So I'm thinking to myself I'm screwed (which is true), as I see the names of vital system files going by.
So after completion it automatically reboots (chkdsk forced it), so I get to the screen where the login should be, but no press ctrl alt del to begin message but instead I get a box saying a service (lssas i think) specified invalid parameters. I click ok, and I having nothing but a solid blue screen. I press ctrl alt del and nothing, so I reboot again. This time I get the same error, but I also get the ctrl alt del to begin message, and I press, I then enter my login message. It does stuff for a second and then reboots.
So now I let it reboot again, and during the reboot it powers down. I was confused by this. I pressed the power switch, and I could see the power, hd leds blink for a sec and then blink off and the PS doesn't even start. So I press again a few times and get nothing. I leave it alone for awhile, come back and it powers up again. Same error, same login attempt, same power down.
I grab my laptop from the otherroom and plug it in to the same wall socket (directly not through the UPS) that my UPS is plugged into. At that instant, it goes in to power save mode (too quick to be normal power saving), so I quick unplug it, and plug it into the ups. As I plug it in, it it comes out of power save and operates normally (that's what I'm working with). So I'm thinking something is wrong with the power outlet (I will pursue that tomorrow), so I go and grab one of those indoor/outdoor orange heavy duty extension cords and plug everything into a different room, and all seems to be working fine.
So at this point i try my computer again, same thing. I decide its time to repair the winxp install, so I boot off of the XP cd and load the RAID drivers. Right at the screen where it says R to repair, something to install, something to exit, I choose repair, and it immediatly powers down. I did it again, and this time it powers down a second after this screen comes up.
So this is where I am now. I think I had bad power or something, and I now suspect that the PS or the motherboard might be bad. But since it really consisently powers down at the same point, im confused as to what the problem is.
Anybody have help to offer?

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.mspx
It may not be a virus but when you said Lsass
It may be the PSU.

KT4 Ultra--Replacing C-Media with SoundBlaster Card

What's the best way to replace on board audio with a sound card? Do I have to go into the bios or fool with jumpers and turn off the on board audio before I install the card and drivers? Or do I just uninstall the c-Media drivers?
Thanks.

Hi!
Soundblaster is definately great card. I have owned several of them, latest one being Live Player 5.1. The sound quality of those cards were okay, but nothing spectacular. The situation was the same with Hercules Fortissimo II card I had.
Now I'm using the 6 channel C-Media chip of my KT4 Ultra BSR -motherboard. After comparing the sound quality of Live Player, Fortissimo II & C-media chip I was quite surprised because the integrated chip delivers equal quality throught the speakers I use (SB 5100 5.1).
So I sold thouse other cards & I'm very happy with the sound I have. One bonus with C-Media has been reliable & solid drivers (IMHO SB could learn something here
PS. This KT4 Ultras BSR is rock solid & i really love it! :D

KT4 Ultra (MS-6590) very slow boot

i got a strange one here:
i replaced my MSI K7T Turbo2 with a KT4 Ultra. Since i got the new board installed (the KT4 Ultra) the machine needs very long until it reads mbr of the disk. what i exactly mean is, post boot goes with normal speed. all settings (FSB speed, DDR speed, CPU speed) are correct. after post boot, when it should start to load windows from the disk, it takes > 1 minute until the boot screen of windows shows up. after windows could boot, i don't have any problems anymore (speed rocks). i did not have this problem with the K7T Turbo2 board and except memory i still use the same components:
MSI KT4 Ultra w 1.4 BIOS
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (not oc'ed) (~36-43C)
MSI G4Ti4200-TD(MS-8870)
Adaptec 39160 64bit dual (in a 32bit slot ;( )
3*Seagate ST318452LW X15 Ultra160 15K RPM
1 GB PC-2700 DDR (2x512MB)
Creative Soundblaster Audigy Gamer
Compaq NC3123 FastEthernet NIC
Logitech Mousman (dual optical) USB
Microsoft Sidewinder USB
the boot delay was not only when booting from the disks, i had the same experience when booting from cdrom: after post boot about 1 min. nothing and then excpected speed.
any idea?
thanks sidderz

thanks for the hints,
at the stage where boot is delayed so bad, HD access has not even been happened. the OS did not even start to load. so i don't believe the OS has anything to do with it. (except msi found a way to load the OS without read access to the drives )
like i said, right after post boot after floppy seek (my boot order: floppy, cdrom, scsi id 0) the machine just stops (for me it looks like bios is waiting for an answer and then times out) with a black monitor (but signal seems to be still there cause the monitor doesn't go to stand-by). first i thought about an IRQ conflict, but i took care to not use pci slots with shared IRQ's. when the computer starts to read from the disks, boot process is fast as expected. but until the system even starts to boot the os from the disks (read access to mbr on disks), more than one minute just nothing happens, not even disk access. i also checked if the computer is just frozen, but this was not the case, at least the keyboard was not frozen (numlock/capslock and reboot with ctrl+alt+del still worked)
honestly i believe it's a bios issue

Instability with KT4 Ultra & 3000+

Hey all, I was wondering if you guys could help me out.
I just bought a Athlon XP 3000+ (333 FSB), and I cannot run it at any higher of a FSB than 100. I have a volcano + SLK900 hsf, and am running around 20 degrees C at idle. Anytime I place a load on the processor, it dies... I have the newest KT4 Ultra bios (1.4). Please let me know if you guys have any ideas!
Also, before I got the 3000+, I had a 2100+, and my ram would perform horribly (around PC2100 speeds), any ideas on that would also be helpful.
Specs:
Motherboard: KT4 Ultra (6590)
Processor: XP 3000+ (Barton Core)
RAM: 1 gig Corsair XMS PC3200
PSU: 500 Watt
Video: GeForce 4 Ti 4600
Sound: SB Live Platinum 5.1
Thanks for any help that can be given!

by strain I mean something that makes the computer work hard (ie, benchmark like Sandrasoft/3dMark, or a newer game). I notice it dies because the whole computer shuts powers down.
Also, I ran PC Alert 4 on my machine, and it says that my 3.3 voltage is low (2.94 or so). Would this kill it? I ask because its that low even when the FSB is 100 (the computer is rock stable at 100). Would there be any way to further test to see if its the power supply thats having problems?
Finally, I ran memtest86 on my ram, and it passed every test at every speed.

Problem with my MSI KT4 Ultra

Hi all!
I have a BIG problem, I have tried to look at this board, but there is many different answers out there ;(
I have KT4 Ultra with Athlon XP 2600+
I have set FSB to 166, and when I startup BIOS says Athlon XP 2600+.
But in windows system, it only says:
AMD Athlon XP2600+
2.09Ghz !!!!
768Mb RAM
Why is windows only says 2.09Ghz??
AND, I think my system is very slow. I used to have AMD 1200Mhz. And this sytem is almost like my last computer.
My System:
MSI KT4 Ultra ( MS-6590 ) with BIOS
CPU AMD Athlon XP 2600+
768MB DDR 400 RAM
GeForce 4 TI4200AGP 8x
80 Gb Seagate 7200 Harddrive

Quote
Originally posted by swedecom
Ok, I use these settings in my BIOS, are they right for my system??
MY SYSTEM:
MSI KT4 Ultra ( MS-6590 ) with BIOS
CPU AMD Athlon XP 2600+
768MB DDR 400 RAM
GeForce 4 TI4200AGP 8x
80 Gb Seagate 7200 Harddrive
MY SETTINGS IN BOIS:
Spread Spectrum = +- 0.25%
CPU FSB Clock = 166Mhz
CPU Ratio = Auto
CPU Vcore = (V) Auto
DDR Voltage (V) = Auto
Termination Vol (V) = Auto
AGP Voltage (V) = Auto
Hope someone can help me out

Follow up to 1.3 BIOS on KT4 Ultra

Cured my two problems
1) Extra mouse pointer in games
2) Stuttering in games
How?
By going back to BIOS 1.2
Can only assume that BIOS 1.3 was rushed out without sufficient testing. It MAY fix IDE transfer problems, but on my system which is SCSI anyway it introduced the two problems above.
Definately starting to wonder if I should go back to Abit, this is my first MSI board, and probably my last, the way things are going.
KT4 Ultra
XP2600+ 333fsb
512mb Corsair XMS DDR 400 running at 333
Adaptec U160 SCSI
SB Audigy

BIOS 1.25 is a BETA BIOS, meaning it's unsupported by MSI. AFAIK, it might fix the Optical mouse LED stays ON even PC has powered off.
For those have PS/2 Optical mouse, please test this beta BIOS against this issue.

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME KT4 Ultra MS-6590

I have been get this UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error all day. I been try to install XP Pro but it alway does this after I begin the install progress.
I have done fdisk, Partition Magic format, windows install format, and format but I keep get this error. I thought that it was was the hard drive but I try install XP on my ASUS K7V mobo and it work without a prob.
The reason I reinstall is to turn off the APIC and APCI so I can stop the infinite loop error I been getting. I have restore the default setting and still doesn't work.
System Config:
CPU: 2200+ XP
Motherboard: KT4 Ultra-SR
RAM Slot-1: Kingston 333 512 MB CL 2.5
RAM Slot-2: None
RAM Slot-3: None
display card: AIW Radeon 9700
IDE-1M: Western Digital 200 GB SE 8MB
IDE-1S: None
IDE-2M: Samsung 48x-16x-48x CD-R/RW SD-616Q
IDE-2S: Samsung 16X DVD SW-248B
IDE-3: None
SER-1: None
SER-2: None
PCI-1: None
PCI-2:None
PCI-3: None
PCI-4: None
PCI-5: None
PCI-6: None
PSU: (Antec AMD Approved 350W)
BIOS revision: 1.3
Operating System: WIN XP

This had happened to me a few months ago. What had happened on my system was that the Book Sector to the hard drive had been overwritten.
I loaded the recovery console from the XP CD and wrote a new one on there. Then the system loaded perfectly. No problems since.
Hope this may help
Andrew

Kt4 ultra bios

have a strange paradox regarding disturbing message at boot up.
when i boot my system i recieve a message:
"no drive attached to fast track controller. no bios detected.."
i love msi boards and have used this forum in past very sucessfully with the assistance of BAS.
I donated my old system to a freind in need. It was all of 11 months old and was a very stable system built on a k7t pro 2-ru. It had all the bells and whistles. what a mistake.
my new system is as follows:
kt4 ultra fisr
256 mb ddr3200 samsung (as recommended by msi)
m-audio revolution 7.1
ati all in one wonder radeon 8500 64mb
2-80gb western digital special edition hard drives
dvd/cd combo lg electronics gcc-4320b
athalon xp 2200
550 watt antec tru-power psu
lian li case with 4 fans (of which only 3 work with the power supply while allowing fan monitoring)
klipsch pro-media 5.1 speakers
winxp pro
how i got there to the afore mentioned msge regarding controller and no bios detected...
I was experiencing a lot of problems with the new set up
such as:
1. system crashes while viewing tv
2. unexplained boot up of system in the middle of the
night (that was freaky and kind of humorous)
3. other system reboots and difficulty of system
shutdown
4. device driver failure messages regarding the ati card
such as "atimmc.exe driver failure"
all system crashes revolved around the ati card and after recoveries many registeries were messed with as expected.
all in all I got by with the system as long as i remained off applications involving the radeon card.
last week I checked into the forum here and noticed issues with this motherboard and radeon cards.
i went to the ati site noticed updated drivers, and at the msi site, updated bios for the kt4 ultra boards.
i did not have a floppy so i backed off flashing the new bios onto the board. I currently have the first version (1.00 or something), the screen flashes so briefly these days.
i decided to reformat the drives and reload xp onto the new system and then retreive the newer drivers for ati card. upon installation while reading my neurophysiology book upon boot up is when xp informed me that no bios was detected. xp asked me if i wanted to continue. so i did continue with sucessfull installation of xp.
being quite surprised that i could still get system on board, i am wondering how to get the bios to be detected and if I should try and flash new bios, if this will correct this. I am also with fresh install of xp having no difficulties shutting down system now and i am no longer having mystery unassisted boots of the system.
all in all, before the bios problem i was just wondering about the stability of the board with the ati radeon card.
Now I am very concerned with the message, "no driver attached to fast track controller... no bois detected"
any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
Boy, do i miss that k7t board...
thank you,
Eric

Do NOT worry about the fasttrack controller message!!
It just says you don't have any serial-ATA disk attached. This is how to get rid of the message:
In BIOS:
=> Integrated Peripherals
=> OnBoard PCI Controller
=> Serial ATA ---> set this to "Disabled"
Can't say I experience any of your other problems, although I had some problems with the sound card the first time I installed.
Seems as if the problems are fewer the more times you install/format the system.....actually experienced that on a couple of MSI-cards. In the end, everything has worked fine for me, so I'm happy with them (except design and layout of the new nForce K7N2G-cards!! ridiculous!)

No optical-out sound on MSI KT4-Ultra!!

Hi, I have recently set up a system based on the MSI KT4-Ultra board. I'm using an Athlon XP 1700+, a Radeon 9000 video card, and I've installed Windows 98.
Although all the drivers and audio applications which MSI provided installed fine, and 2-channel audio from the on-board sound chip works great both for music and for the 3-4 games I've installed so far, I can't seem to get the optical SPDIF port to work! I bought a cable and connected the computer to my Sony MD-player and attempted to copy my CDs onto MD. I go into the MSI control panel and check the box to enable SPDIF-out, removing the speaker cable from the analog line-out just for good measure. When I plug the optical cable into my MD it recognises digital input and prepares for recording. I press record on the MD and play on the computer's CD-player app, but the MD LED shows "no signal". I'm pretty sure both the MD recorder and cable are OK since I've used them to copy CDs from a Kenwood portable CD-player quite recently, so it must be the MB that's giving me problems. Indeed, when I've stopped playback in the CD-player app and went back into the audio control panel, I found that the SPDIF box had been unchecked of its own accord. I've tried this several times, and I've unplugged the S-bracket and reinstalled it all over again just to make sure it was plugged in properly, and I still get the same problem. All audio works fine except optical out! Haven't got a coaxial cable or recorder so I can't check if the coaxial port is equally buggered or if it's just the optical, but I'm getting really annoyed here: this was the one feature I liked best about this board and the only one which isn't working! Any ideas, anyone?

dude, i think i can get u ur signal, but currently i can only get silent recordings, u may have better luck.
on the minidisc, there should be a switch or button that will toggle synchronised recording on and off, turning it off should get u a signal, but it wont be in sync wiv the cd, ie u cant trust it to form track gaps.
hope that helps, done flame me if it dont, if i manage to get substance to my recording, i will send u the info just in case.
take it easy

KT4 Ultra FISR Updated Bios Still Reboots

I bought a KT4 Ultra last week. I hooked up everything needed to install my OS (Video and Hard Drive) to install Windows 2000. It took me a while to get a good install because it would crash in the middle of Win2K setup. After reading the posts on the subject I upgraded the Bios to 1.3. I no longer had problems with installing software of transferring large files between CD and HD. Although a bit slow, it worked.
But now I have another problem. The computer reboots when the CPU is being used hard, like running 3D intensive software. For example I have 3D studio rendering and then I try to open Internet explorer and computer will reboot.
I check my PSU by measuring the voltage (with DMM) on the 5 volt line and causing a reboot during CPU intensive activities. I even unplugged an extra HD and ran my FSB at 100 mhz. I did not notice any voltage drop and the computer still rebooted.
I need to decide to if I want to return the MB, before I go out a buy a PSU and find out it did not fix my problem.
Any ideas.

Video Card is a
Video: Compro GeForce3 Ti 200
HD: Maxtor 30GB 7200 RPM ATA100
Power Supply (don't know brand name)
300W, with 150W for both the 3.3 and 5 Volts (at
least according to the label)
The computer also rebooted while trying to run
Nero to copy a CD image to hard drive. So I don't think its video card related. I had this video card in my ABIT KT7 with no problems.
M.

Problem with KT4 Ultra and XP 2700

First excuse my bad english (i'm from Germany)!!
I have a heavy problem with my KT4 Ultra.
First my system:
AMD Athlon XP 2700
Mainboard: MSI KT4 Ultra (MS-6590) Bios vers. 1.1
MSI Geforce 4 Ti 4200 64 Mb
512 Mb DDR Ram Apacer Technology 512 MB 16x(32mx8)DDR-SDRAM PC2700U-2533-700(CL2.5 upto 167MHz)(CL2 upto 133MHz
Sound : Onboard
GlobalWIN CAK38 II Kupfer
Powersupply: Levicom 420W
Win XP SP1
Now the problen:
When i turn the FSB in the Bios up to 166MHz
the system crashes on Windows startupscreen!!
I've turned the FSP clock down to 164 MHz and Windows starts.But when i runned 3DMark2001 it crashes back to desktop !!
Then i turned the FSB clock down to 159 MHz and the system runns stabile!!
Now what i've already tried:
Turned down Ram timings and frequency (same prob.)
No heatproblem (CPU at 118.f)
Had the same system exapt an XP1800 instead an XP2700 and no problems!!
Called the MSI hotline (Germany) and they told me to type the FSB manually in the Bios (insted of numblock +and -). ?(
Still the same problem !! ;(
Has anyone the same problem as i ???
THX !!

Hi,
I would try other ram....
Or start from BIOS default settings and only change CPU-FSB....
See what happens...

Kt4 ultra bios 1.3 ati problem

I updated my bios a while ago and when i did i noticed pixels in weird places. I updated from 1.2 i was having problems with crc errors, after that i couldnt run any driver verision on my ati 8500le above 2.5 so i couldnt run 3.0a 3.1. i was just checking if anyone else had these problems when updating to 1.3 on there kt4 ultra. and i flahed twice the first time i thought it was a bad flash or something. i was running 3.0 and downgraded. i am hoping msi will fix this issue but who knows. overclocked or under clocked i still have the problem.
i am running 2.13GHz overclocked from 1.73
kt4ultra
768 ddr400 running at 333MHz
ati 8500le

I've done that, but the problem still exist.
I think it's more like a BIOS problem since there's no problem when I'm runnign 1.1 instead of 1.3

KT4 Ultra: problem config. raid array IDE3

I owe the MSI 6590 KT4 Ultra BSR mainboard and I have difficulties configurring the RAID array in striping mode, on the IDE3 controller.
The manual describes on page 2-18 it's possible to connect up to 2 hard drives, cdrom, 120mb fd and other devices to the IDE3 controller.
Unfortunately only one of my two MAXTOR D740X-6L (6L080J4) 80gig drives is recognized by the array.
One Maxtor hard drive is jumpered as MASTER and the other is set up as SLAVE.
When I hook up the cable to an ordinary IDE port (eg IDE1) the two drives are properly recognized.
Both drives can be formatted using the regular IDE ports, this means without any cluster errors or other errors so the drives are physically OK.
Before I wrote this post I checked the support section again to make sure I am using the latest BIOS which is 1.1. I also downgraded to 1.0, but that didn't solve my problem either.
Since I work in a computer shop now and then I had the opportunity to check two Maxtor Fireball3 30gig drives on a different MS-6590 RAID board (BIOS 1.1.) and exactly the same problem occurs: the 2nd drive won't be recognized in the ARRAY on IDE3.
Please tell me what to do to make the striping option fully work on my two IDENTICAL Maxtor hard drives since MSI support came up with a standard email, which didn't cheer me up at all. Hopefully this time they will investigate this matter since no doubt more people will experience this.

Thanks for the quick response, though it's not satisfactory for me (of course).
Actually before installing the new KT4 Ultra I owed the KT266 Pro RAID motherboard. It's true this board has two controllers for the RAID option. Nevertheless because after reading the manual of this new board I was convinced I could connect two hard drives on the IDE3-channel. This is the reason I decided to go ahead and to upgrade to this new mainboard.
I guess I have to go back to my employer and fall back again to my KT266 (MS6380).

KT4 Ultra MS-6590 - Win XP Home boots with 2GB DDR333 installed but not 3GB

Spec...
KT4 Ultra MS-6590
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (FSB set to 166MHz in BIOS)
BIOS MS-6590v1.4
Win XP Home 2002, SP3
Problem...
Previously, had 768MB RAM installed, and XP strangely identified CPU as a 2200+.
Recently upgraded the RAM to 3GB DDR333 (3 sticks of 1GB 184-pin unbuff DIMM 128MX64 DDR PC2700), and changed BIOS settings for CPU and DRAM.
In the DOS boot screen, Win XP progress indicator fills completely from left to right, then stops with a half-blinking cursor in the top left of the screen.
Removed 1GB stick and Win XP successfully loaded, also now recognising the Athlon XP 3000+, and running a heck of a lot faster.
Tried adding the /3GB switch to the boot.ini file, which didn't do anything, and after reading more forum advice, guessed this might be irrelevant. I don't think this is a 4GT and PAE issue, as I'm not trying to install above 4GB (if I've correctly understood).
Also, forum advice (various sites) conflicts on whether Win XP 32-bit is limited to 2GB or 4GB, and I can't find any workarounds for my current setup.
Any ideas?

Another test I've done is to enable boot logging with Win XP. This appends command lines to the file 'ntbtlog' in the windows directory, which mainly shows drivers being loaded as Win XP is launched. The log is normally date and time-stamped for every boot-logging session.
When all 3 sticks are installed, I cold boot, then press F8 and select 'enable boot logging' from the options menu. This is what appears on the screen as the system, attempts to load Win XP.
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\hal.dll
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\KDCOM.DLL
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\system32\BOOTVID.dll
Loaded driver ACPI.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\System32\DRIVERS\WMILIB.SYS
Loaded driver pci.sys
Loaded driver isapnp.sys
Loaded driver viaide.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\System32\DRIVERS\PCIIDEX.SYS
Loaded driver MountMgr.sys
Loaded driver ftdisk.sys
Loaded driver PartMgr.sys
Loaded driver VolSnap.sys
Loaded driver atapi.sys
Loaded driver disk.sys
Loaded driver \WINDOWS\System32\DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS
Loaded driver fltmgr.sys
Loaded driver sr.sys
Loaded driver PxHelp20.sys
Loaded driver KSecDD.sys
Loaded driver Ntfs.sys
Loaded driver NDIS.sys
Loaded driver Mup.sys
Loaded driver BTHidMgr.sys
Then the process freezes and a solid white block appears in the top-left of the screen, with the top-right corner of the block blinking.
At this point, I turn off the PC using the main power switch, then remove the 3rd memory stick. After booting up again, with only 2 sticks installed, opening the text file 'ntbtlog' reveals that this boot event wasn't logged.
So, I reboot Win XP with only the 2 sticks installed, and select 'enable boot logging'. This time, the above list of loaded drivers is shown in the text file, plus a whole lot more. The potentially interesting observation is the next in the list after "Loaded driver BTHidMgr.sys" which is "Loaded driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\amdk7.sys".
'amdk7.sys' is a driver file which seems to come with one of the Win XP Service Packs, and which "is necessary to enable Windows XP support for AMD PowerNow! technology on computers that use a mobile Athlon 4 or mobile Duron processor." http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306458
Various other posts refer to it in relation to AMD Athlon XP 3000+ Mobile, whereas mine is a 3000+ in a desktop. Also, if 'amdk7.sys' isn't available, then Win XP will load the generic driver 'processr.sys'. In fact, my 'ntbtlog' includes the entry "Did not load driver \SystemRoot\System32\DRIVERS\processr.sys" which would make sense.
However, my curiosity is that with the 3 sticks installed, Win XP fails to continue loading when reaching 'amdk7.sys' in the driver list.
Another test I did was to change the power management settings in the BIOS.
"IPCA Function: This item is to activate the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power
Management Interface) function. If your operating system is ACPI-aware, such
as Windows 98SE/2000/ME, select Yes. Available options: Yes, No."
This was normally set to Yes. When I set it to No and rebooted with 3 sticks installed, instead of a half-blinking white block (as described above), the screen went black and then the system rebooted itself...
The plot thickens!...
Maybe there's a clear explanation for this - however, I'm wary of doing something to the 'amdk7.sys' driver file (whether removing or disabling it somehow) in case it prevents Win XP from launching with just my 2 sticks installed. I'd guess there are precautions, but need further info on whether this is relevant, and what the implications might be.

KT4 Ultra Rocks!!

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