Windows ME Power Down duriung startup

[hooperkj]

I'm in the process of upgrading my PC as follows:

> Replacing Shuttle AK32A with ECS KT600A. (The AK32A is giving
the BSOD about twice a day.)
> Replacing 4GB drive with 20Gb drive.
> Transferred the CPU (Duron 1.3Ghz) and memory (Crucial 256Mb DDR2100)
from the old mobo to the new mobo.
> Reload Windows ME on new hard drive.

The problem occurred near the end of installing Windows ME when I get to the point where Windows setup prompts you to reboot. When I reboot, the system gets as far as the first Windows ME splash screen, then I get the "It is now safe to shut down your computer", and then the system powers down. When I power back up, the system proceeds to start in safe mode and the shutdown occurs again.

I have changed my agp video card for a pci one and also tried some bios changes but with no luck. All in all, I've attempted to load Widows ME 4 times but I keep seeing the same problem.

Thinking I had a bad mobo, I reinstalled the old one but retained the new disk drive with the new Windows ME image. The same thing occured with the old mobo, so the new one is okay and the problem is with the Windows ME image on the new drive.

I've connect the new drive as D: on my old system and it reformatted okay and I'm running scan disk on it now. Other than this I'm not sure what to try next. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ken

[GaryRouth]

Hi Ken,

Welcome to the PC Mechanic forums.

A good first step in your case would be to test the 20gb drive with the disk diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer's website. [Or if you bought the drive new, it should have come with diagnostics on either a floppy diskette or a CD].

What BSOD's were you getting before you decided to try a motherboard upgrade?

Some ECS motherboards are sensitive to power fluctuations (so they need an above-average, quality power supply), and also some models act strangely with certain Power Management options turned on [Spread Spectrum can give it fits, some Temp settings seem to cause reboots]. Generally here at PC Mech you'll hear advice to try a better-regarded brand for a motherboard upgrade [we like to recommend Asus, Intel, Abit, Soltek, and such]. That may change someday, if ECS can improve it's quality control - but as it is, there's a chance you've jumped from the fire into the frying pan.
---------------
When you put WinMe on the new drive, was it blank & freshly partitioned & formatted? Or had you copied the contents of the older drive onto it first? (and then tried a reinstall?) . . . If the drive was clean, that might point to a hardware problem.

If you have backups of the data you wish to keep, and program CDs for your software, why not try a clean install? The Windows Me disk that you have = is it a full installation CD? [not any sort of Recovery Disk, or OEM-branded disk, like Dell or Gateway?]

If it Was a clean install that's having all the trouble - start testing the hardware - memory (you can use MemTest86+ http://www.memtest.org/), hard drive (as mentioned above), and re-check the Bios Settings in the ECS [if it's an easy exchange, it might be worth exchanging the ECS for something a bit higher on the industry ladder]

Just to be thorough: what brand/wattage power supply is in the case now?

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[hooperkj]

Thanks for your input Gary. I found the fix after a lot of Web searching last night. It seems that Windows ME is not reliable with ACPI and this feature must be disabled when installing. To do this, you must use the command line to start the Windows setup program as follows: setup /p i (space between the p and the i). I did this and was able to successfully load Windows ME.

[GaryRouth]

That's odd --- I haven't had to use that switch since the early Win98 days, when the motherboards were the problem. But then, I didn't build very many WinMe machines.

Glad you found a solution - if you have any odd behavior with Power settings in the future, see about disabling most of the Wake events in the Bios, and let Windows control the power handling. (usually you want to have ACPI and APM enabled).

. . . Gary

[p.s. ...if you still have the link handy to where you saw the info about ACPI and WinMe, I'd be curious to take a look. Never too late to learn! . . . ]

[hooperkj]

Gary,

Here's the link: http://www.usbman.com/WinME%20USB%20Guide.htm

Ken

[GaryRouth]

Thanks for the link!

Intriguing reading. I wonder how widespread the problem was. I don't get to see many WinMe systems, since at the lab we went from Win95 to Win98 to Win2000. Really strange, since ACPI works pretty well with Win98se, which is from the same general time frame as WinMe. Looks like I have a little research project for my rapidly vanishing spare time

Thanks again.
. . . Gary

[glc]

In my experience, ACPI causes a lot of problems in Win98 - even though it's supposed to allow everything to share one IRQ, in practice this causes a lot of conflicts. ACPI doesn't really work right till you get to Win2000 and XP.