$100 to you if your suggestion fixes this!

[KingCheese]

Alright guys I'm a manager at Best Buy and I will mail out a $100 gift card or just send you straight up cash/check/money order to anyone who has a suggestion that fixes this problem...

Bought a 1.1GHz Athlon T-bird and Asus A7Pro motherboard with 512mb PC133 RK-byte memory. BIOS IS LATEST a71005d!
GeForce II GTS video card that was in old Athlon 750 *slot a* system
27GB western digital hd
30gb maxtor hd
sblive!
ethernet card
creative dxr3 decoder board
tdk 12x writer and 5x creative dvd

ANYWAY! Put the system together, it's not hard, all jumpers on motherboard are set to default for jumperless bios settings.

System posts 1.1ghz 512mb ram blah blah...
I install WinME fine, very fast install, works awesome!
I reboot to setup WinME and POOF BSOD "VPOWERD Initilization Failure, You will need to restart your system. System halted" and nothing...

I have tried the following:
1) Swapping hds, installing fresh on both, etc.
2) Swapping video cards from GeForce II to Voodoo3 3000
3) Swapping memory from pc133 rk-byte to pc100 rk-byte to pc100 Kingston *memory worked in older athlon system*
4) Disabling power management in bios
5) Disabling usb
6) setting ram cas settings from 3 to 2 and 2 to 3
7) Made sure cpu/heatsink were properly mounted and working
8) Tried installing win98se only to get a "vcache intilization error"
9) bareboning it with nothing but video card in

WTF? HELP!
$100 to whoever has a suggestion that fixes this! hey that's a free stick of 256 pc133 ram!

Thanks
Cheese

 

[HdwGuy]

AMD's require a lot of power and you might make sure your power supply is a good 300 or better supply. At amd's web sight they recomend no less that 300 watts p/s and give the recemoned vendors. If you can get your hands on a spare it is worth swapping it out to eleminate the p/s.

Good luck

 

[KingCheese]

it is a 300W powersupply that I used in my older athlon system flawlessly

 

[HotWire]

King,try this, it may help you track down the problem.
You need to get to the Startup menu. Restart the computer and hold down the Ctrl key during the Post. After the Post is complete the Startup menu appears.
1.Normal 2. Logged (\Bootlog.txt)3.Safe Mode 4.Step-by-step-cnfirmation.
You will need to select Logged. Type the number and then press Enter.
The Logged option starts WinMe normally, but records each step of the boot procedure to a text file named Bootlog.txt, which is stored in the system's root folder. Use this option when WinMe won't start and you want to see where in the boot process the failure occurs.
1. Restart the computer and then run the Logged (Bootlog.txt) option.
2. When WinMe fails to load, insert your emergency boot disk and restart the computer.
3. At the DOS prompt, type "edit bootlog.txt" and press Enter to open Bootlog.txt in the MS=DOS Editor.
4. Search for a line that contains LoadFailed.
(0000FC89B) Loading VXD = CONFIGMG
(0000FC89B) LoadFailed = CONFIGMG
5. Reinstall the offending driver or file.
If the line shows only a filename without an extension or path (for example CONFIGMG) it's a VXD that is loading from within VMM32.vxd. In this case, extract the VXD file and copy it to the C:\Windows\System\Vmm32 folder.
If the line shows a filename with an extension but no folder (for example JAVASUP,VXD), it's a VXD that's loading from the C:\Windows\System folder. Extract the file from the WinMe source files (or wherever) and then replace the existing file in the C:\Windows\System\folder.
If the line shows a full path (folder plus filename), reinstall the file to that folder.
It should be noted that not all LoadFailed lines indicate a problem. In some cases, a driver may fail to load simply because the necessary hardware doesn't exist on the system. For example, the driver VPOWERD will fail to load if the system doesn't support Advanced Power Management. False LoadFailed lines may also appear with the following drivers: DSOUND,EBIOS,NDIS2SUP,VSERVER and VSHARE.

PS If this dosen't work reformat hard drive and reinstall ME after cleaning your system of everything but the video card

 

[Petro89]

Try turning off any references to Plug&Play BIOS or Operating System in the BIOS.

It does sound like it could be a power problem though.

 

[BadThad]

The message in ME is related to this, so check it out:

LoadFailed = vpowerd
If the Advanced Power Management (APM) driver determines that your computer does not support APM, the driver is not loaded. However, APM support might be disabled. To determine if APM is disabled in Device Manager:
Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.

*Double-click System, and then click the Device Manager tab.
*Double-click to expand System Devices.
*Double-click Advanced Power Management Support to open its properties. (If *Advanced Power Management Support is not listed, your computer does not support APM.)
*Click the Settings tab.
*Verify that the Enable Power Management Support check box is selected.

In general:

Did you install the Via 4in1 drivers? Click Here to get the Latest Driver.

It seems obvious the problem is NOT hardware related. It has to do with drivers somewhere. The 98 VCACHE error means the system could not allocate RAM for the cache, which implies some other device is taking it. Start the system in SAFEMODE. Click START>RUN> and type in SYSEDIT. Go to a spot below the [386enh] section and add this:

[vcache]
minfilecache=16386
maxfilecache=131072
chunksize=512

What do you have AGP aperature size set to in BIOS? Try setting it to 256MB.

 

[emjem]

Don't pay any attention to mikelou26, he forgot to take his pills.

Don't know why mods don't catch up to him.

 

[Andrew99]

That is a strange problem..

VPOWERD - definately related to APM
It seems like the VPOWERD error is a problem with the APM.. The solution for that appears to be to disable the APM in the BIOS.. And then unselect or remove the APM feature from the installation of Windows.
Your motherboards power management stuff might not be compatible with WindowsME somehow... I'm not exactly sure where you can remove APM support during the installation though..

http://www.geocities.com/~budallen/fatalexp.html#Exception 0E in VPOWERD During First

vcache error - this is related to disk caching...
Apparantly this was the 32 bit replacement for the old 16 bit DOS version of "smartdrv". Why would this be failing? I don't know .. It's doubtful, but possible that windows is trying to put too much data into this cache area... Look in the registry or system.ini (or other.ini) for an entry called [vcache] ... play with those settings ... increase the max .. and hope.

http://www.computing.net/windows95/wwwboard/forum/11428.html

http://www.sure.org.ru/docs/hardware/pcrepair/chap47.html

And samaritans shouldn't (I originally left off the n't... oops) help others for money, they should help others because it is the right thing to do. This also prevents samaritans from feeling bad if they could not help. Capitalists on the other hand... compensate them dearly for any service they provide. While I am a capitalist, I personally don't care about compensation, I just hope this helps in some way, no matter how small.

 

[GeekyNerd]

well ya got a good computer setup but there is one thing I learned when ya build your own computer esp something super new like you have installing windows for the first time can be kinda hectic so usually when I install for the first time ( did this for Windows ME and Win2kpro and Win98se) I would remove every thing from my computer just leave the haddrives in and the video card and the CDROM (no dvd or cdrw if possible DVD no way)...make sure you have all the drivers downloaded for your appropitae hardware and also when windows me starts the little welcome thing hit CTRL ALT DELETE and shut it down ... it can crash your system because of not so good or no drivers for video and sound cards ( ie the removal of sound cards) ALso go in to our bios to MAKE SURE the Advance power management thing is enable also here is something I found on the MS website that might help ya... (try this is safe mode if ya can ( hold down the CTRL key after ya start the computer))

LoadFailed = vpowerd
If the Advanced Power Management (APM) driver determines that your computer
does not support APM, the driver is not loaded. However, APM support might be disabled.
To determine if APM is disabled in Device Manager:
Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
Double-click System, and then click the Device Manager tab.
Double-click to expand System Devices.
Double-click Advanced Power Management Support to open its properties. (If Advanced Power Management Support is not listed, your computer does not support APM.)
Click the Settings tab.
Verify that the Enable Power Management Support check box is selected

dont mess with the ram setting try to leave the bios as it came and make the harddrive and cdrom as auto
oh and hey here is one thing to try use the boot disk and then @ the c promt make a direcotry called like win9x and copy the win9x directory from the CDrom and then install WInME from the harddrive. here is what it should look like ( D: is ur CDrom)
c:\md win9x
c:\cd win9x
c:\win9x>
c:\win9x>copy d:\win9x *.*
once the files are copied go to the directory and type in setup and hit enter

c:\win9x> setup

also ya might want to try to use a regular CDrom drive and not a dvdrom or CDRW

 

[HotWire]

Does the latest bios for the "Pro" give support for the 1.1 Gig? I thought it was only good up to 1.0 Gig!

 

[fitzm]

The A7Pro is based on VIA KT133 chipset in ATX form factor for the latest support in AMD® ThunderbirdTM / DuronTM 550MHz ~ 1GHz processors.

link

 

[esung]

Well.. as I recall, there's a new vpowerd.vxd published from M$ last DEC.. maybe it'll correct your problem?

but since Win98SE also failed to install, maybe the problme lies on the hardware.. you MoBo. since it's the only thing that's not swapped according to your post.

And did you install the VIA drivers?

 

[Drachnyan]

I am assuming that you've checked the PS and made sure you've not fried it.

 

[Slikkster]

Looking at your motherboard specs, I see nothing about it supporting any T-bird ABOVE 1 Gig MAX. The bios updates say nothing about supporting 1.1ghz cpu's. Obviously, I don't have the latest documentation on the mb, but is this cpu you're using officially supported?

Secondly, the bios updates available are 3 days apart from latest to second-most recent. I'd try flashing down to the "C" version of the bios and see what happens...If no help, reflash your current "D" version.

Edit: Apologies for not noticing others had made the same observation about the cpu specs for this board, but I do concur that it could be an issue.

 

[rudder]

so king of cheese did anyone's solutions help? He took the $$$ + info and ran.

 

[bbulen]

I don't have a solution to your problem, but I am having similar problems. My system seems to be reading data wrong and writing corupt files. The problem seems to go away when I disable the L1 cache in the BIOS. The computer runs very slowly because of this.

Could you try this? Maybe we can track down this problem.

Thanks
bbulen

 

[clumsum]

From my experience, you do not need to offer money or any other added incentive to get all the help you need and then some from the generous members on this forum site ...............!
Everyone here contributes freely, knowing that the favor is often generously returned and passed on to others, so you don't need to cheapen the experience by offering rewards up-front ....... !!!

(Of course a gratefull fellow pc user/geek could always pass on a little token of gratitude, quietly, on-the-side, if he/she really genuinely felt the urge ............ )?

Sure wish I was smarter, ................. so I could win me some of that dough $$$$$$!!!!!?????

 

[Vrangel]

LOL, rudder.

 

[Snoop]

Kingcheese: I have had problems before with some asus motherboards where when the CPU voltage is set to default. It seems that on some mobo's it senses the Default voltage wrong. Go into your bios and set change it from auto/default to user define and set it at 1.75.

Also, like someone previously mentioned DONT FORGET THE VIA4 in 1 drivers

 

[HotWire]

Funny thing about Asus.......they say on the link supplied by Fitzm that the support for the PRO is to 1 Gig but if you click on the specification tab on the upper left it says........to 1 Gig+ This dosen't sit to well with me because now I start to wonder what their meaning is.....future support? how about maybe you can OC it to higher levels? Get with it ASUS you make a great board but this kind of interpretation problems can lead to confusion to the many who might read it!!!

 

[falconx88]

did you really think you are going to get paid?

 

[DocDoo]

Personally, if someone were to offer me $100 for help I provided... I would simply state that I consider myself a "contributor" to AnandTech forum, only payment that is accepted is "thanks."

However, there have been a lot of good answers for KingCheese, just wondering if anything came out of this? And if KingCheese did really "take-the-money-and-run."

You know... being a junior member, removed profile and all.....