OK, I had an old B110 desktop system that I bought back in 2006. This system was really cheap to begin with and used pretty old technology, I had done some upgrading early- more memory and a larger HD. However, I really wanted to see how far I could take this. I knew that from a purely economical perspective it made no sense- it was more of a hobby challenge. So I pulled the Celeron-D processor and replaced it with what I believe is the fastest processor the MB can take - a 3.4 GHZ Northview Pentium 4. The remaining weak link in this system is the on-board video, and what makes it really bad is that it doesn't even have a PCI-express slot to use for an upgrade. So the best you can put in it will be a plain PCI video board. For this I used a Zotac ZT-40605-10L GeForce GT 430 Video Card. I am running windows 7 and I have to say the performance is pretty snappy - it will even run games. I am just having one problem- I need to enter the bios to make a setting change every time I do a cold start (warm reboots are fine). This problem is not from the processor upgrade (it worked fine after that was done) but came with the graphics card upgrade. I do not have this problem if I use the on-board video. I tried working with Zotac- they are just calling this an incompatibility issue. I am guessing I'll have to live with it, but if anyone has any idea's... Here is the problem:
When I turn on the PC, it goes through the BIOS load and then windows starts to load. Then all HD activity just stops and it hangs. If I try doing this in safe mode the same thing happens and I can see that it stalls on the file c:\windows\system32\DRIVERS\Classpnp.sys I have found that if I play with the BIOS I can get windows to start. After that, warm restarts will work. If I shut off the PC however, I am back to this problem. Here is how the BIOS comes into play.
I have found that the mere act of going into the BIOS during a cold start, making a change (absolutely any change), and then saving the change and exiting will result in windows starting normally. For example, I can simply change Keyboard Number Lock from on to off (or off to on). Then when I save and exit, the BIOS load starts over again and windows starts up fine. Additionally, I have observed this:
On the initial start screen, when BIOS is first loading, in the lower right hand corner of the display is an Intel Pentium 4 logo. it is about 2 and 1/4 inches wide on my monitor. When the computer is first started and the system is on a path towards an eventual locking up during windows start- this logo will be shifted off to the right by about 1/4 inch (such that I can't see that part- it is off the screen). When I do the exercise above, and the BIOS starts to load a second time, with the computer on a path towards an eventual successful windows start, the Logo is shifted back so that it is fully visible. By looking at the appearance of that logo, I can tell whether Windows will start or hang. That is with the Zotac card. Now, if I switch the monitor (and BIOS) to my on-board video- there is no issue with starting up Windows. However with on-board video that Pentium 4 logo is always partially off the screen. Whether I make a BIOS change or not- it is shifted to the right. However, with the on-board video this doesn't seem to matter, as things will start up anyway.
Other than this- I have to say that this system is now quite useable. Doing the quick BIOS detour during start up is just a minor inconvenience, but I'd love to solve this problem. Anyone have any ideas about how to resolve this? BTW- I achieved the following Windows 7 Experience Scores with this system:
Processor: 4.4
Memory: 4.5
Graphics: 4.4
Gaming Graphics: 5.0
Primary Disk: 4.4