Just bought a VIA AV8 KT800 Pro with the 939 chipset, an AMD64 3000+, a seagate SATA 160mb drive and a new stick of 512ddr ram

When Im trying to install windows XP I am pressing F6 and selecting the VIA SATA XP driver, windows then carries on loading stuff but then brings up a BSoD

The BSoD says-

"The bios in this system is not fully ACPI complient"

It sugests pressing F7 during install but this doesnt work- it brings up another BSoD about a corrupt ntfs.sys file and problems with dmboot.sys.

I have also tried putting a IDE drive in aswell as the SATA and pressing F6 during the install, this time it doesnt bring up an error about ACPI but it does bring up one about a corrupt ntfs.

In fact I cannot even get the IDE drive to boot (it currently has XP on it) while the SATA is plugged in.

I have installed FlashMenu (a web based bios update utility) and it says that i dont need to update (its 17)

I have also tried two different XP disks

If i plug the old IDE drive in without the sata drive plugged in it boots fine (if i clear the CMOS) and I can load into windows as normal

Can anybody help?

I have Asus P4V8x-x MBs at work here and have never installed a SATA drive for the SATA drives on them. I am sure I may not be getting the most out of the interface, but I have not had that trouble with XP. I also turn off ACPI and APM in bios to start with.

i tried reinstalling XP on one of the IDE drives and got the same error

I also have no real choice to switch off ACPI, i get to switch it from s1 to s3

i tried using f5 f6 and f7 during XP isntall to change the HAL and got the drive partitioned and formatted but got a BSOD when the install started

Just thought I'd post a more thorugh walkthough of what I'd done

Machine-

Board: VIA AV8 KT800 Pro
Chip: AMD64 3000+
Ram: 512 DDR400
Harddisk: Seagate 160gb SATA

When I try to install XP I press F6 and install the 'VIA SATA Drivers for XP,' I get a BSOD before getting any options to install saying that there has been an ACPI error and that I should update the BIOS or press F7

I tried to install XP again, this time pressing F6 and F7, this time I didnt get the ACPI error but I did get another general BSOD (windows has detected a problem and has shut down to protect itself) again before i get any options.

I plugged in the old IDE drive (a 30gb Maxtor) and after clearing the CMOS this booted into windows XP fine and I downloaded FlashMenu the web based bios update utility and it says that i dont need to update (its 1.17)

I tried again, this time I went into the BIOS and turned off everything in Advanced Power Configuration, I then tried to install XP pressing F5 F6 and F7, selecting 'standard pc' and installing the 'VIA SATA Drivers for XP' this time I managed to partition the drive, (creating two 15gig partitions and putting the rest in a third partition) and was able to format the first with NTFS but after this when windows attempts to install I get another general BSOD error (this time mentioning the ntfs.sys)


I have also discovered that if I try and reinstall XP on the IDE drive (remember its booting fine!) I get the same errors, even if the SATA isnt even plugged in. I have tried two different XP CDs with the same errors.

Here's a link to the latest Via SATA drivers (07/02/2005):
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2
Here is also the Via article on the steps VIA recomends to install the SATA drivers for raid.
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx...5&ArticleID=93

If the latest drivers are not helping, I would say there is some kind of damage on that board that we are not able to ID. ACPI is just powersave and should not be causing problems on the WinXP load since the initial load doesnt support powersave.