Advice on Mobo for 64 bit XP Pro

Hi all.

This is kind of a nightmare. I'll try to keep it brief.

I'm building a work machine for my wife. The most demanding thing she does regularly is edit very large images. Thousands and thousands of pixels by thousands and thousands of pixels. (4 foot tall posters) With Layers, Undo, etc, it may take lots of memory. I wanted to start out with 4 GB of ram and be able to go up from there if necessary. That led me to 64 bit XP Pro.

EDIT: OEM version of Win XP Pro x64 with SP2. /EDIT

I don't want Vista.

I bought an ECS board and after banging my head against the wall and talking to their "support" for a week I finally realized that they have changed the board to make it "Vista Compatible" and in the process they broke it for 64 bit XP. The driver install disk refers to XP Pro yet delivers the message, "OS Not Support". The hard copy owners manual that came with the mobo and the online PDF manual both explicitly claim that 64 bit XP Pro is supported -- they apparently never bothered to change them to reflect the changes.

I'll cut the story short by saying it took a week of trying manual driver installs per tech support instructions before they admitted to me that it is the VGA driver for XP and it just doesn't work. When I searched around a bit I also found a Gigabyte mobo that was broken for 64 bit XP Pro and buyers don't find out until too late.

So here's what I'm up to -- I need to buy a mobo that I know will work with Win XP Pro 64 bit. I also want to use the new parts I bought to work with the other board:


I'd love an ATX board with 4 memory slots. I don't need a hot video card.

Has anyone here ACTUALLY built a machine running EDIT: OEM version of Win XP Pro x64 with SP2. /EDIT that has a mobo that will use my parts?

I was looking at the ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe but it may have some issues of it's own.

So, what boards are you using?

Thanks,
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Have you considered installing Linux on the computer as it is? I know how frustrating it is to deal with drivers in Windows. Perhaps your wife could run Photoshop in Wine on a Linux computer, or adapt her skills to The GIMP. I know switching operating systems can be a hassle, but if it's primarily for work, and your only alternative is buying another motherboard, you should at least give it a try first.

If she must use Windows, the M2N-SLI should work fine. It's a very common board, I'd be surprised if there were unresolved issues with running Windows on it.

electromage said:

Have you considered installing Linux on the computer as it is? I know how frustrating it is to deal with drivers in Windows. Perhaps your wife could run Photoshop in Wine on a Linux computer, or adapt her skills to The GIMP. I know switching operating systems can be a hassle, but if it's primarily for work, and your only alternative is buying another motherboard, you should at least give it a try first...

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I wish. I've been using FreeBSD since 2000 but her work invironment is way too intense for that kind of switch...we're working in that direction. I got her started with the Win binaries for the GIMP a few years ago and she's settled into it well.

electromage said:

If she must use Windows, the M2N-SLI should work fine. It's a very common board, I'd be surprised if there were unresolved issues with running Windows on it.

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Thanks. I don't mind buying another board (much) I'd just like to hear what boards people are making work in the wild with the same hardware as mine.

Well I have a Tyan Tomcat n3400b, with an Athlon 64 X2 5200+, and 4GB of PC2-6400. I love the board, it's designed for servers and workstations so it's rock solid, and has a nice array of features. I've never run Windows on this system, so I can't say anything about drivers, but I highly doubt Tyan would break XP-64 support. They tend to serve a more demanding market, that favors stability over lighted fans and neon connectors.

Looking at their drivers page http://tyan.com/support_download_drivers.aspx?model=S.S2925 they seem to have XP-64 support for everything.

Newegg has it for $189, a bit more than the Asus, but I'd say it's worth it.

I tried out XP Pro x64 Edition on my Asus A8N-E for a little while. It seemed to work just fine, although I would much rather use 64-bit Vista (and do) for various reasons. At any rate, with an nVidia-based board such as the M2N series, it should be pretty straightforward. Install Windows as usual, install the appropriate nVidia nForce chipset driver package (but I'd recommended you decline the SW storage drivers and Network Access Manager), reboot. Then install your video drivers and reboot again. Then activate Windows over the Internet, then patch it up.

In the case of my nForce4 Ultra-based board, there was no need to provide SATA drivers during Windows Setup, but in the event you pick something with an AHCI mode available, be aware that WinXP Setup will need drivers spoon-fed to it on a floppy diskette (how arcane!) or else change the SATA controller to non-AHCI mode (which is changed in the motherboard's BIOS menus). some info I put together on SATA, drivers, and Windows setup in case it helps Vista's setup is AHCI-aware and won't normally have an issue with it, but XP isn't.

I suggest not activating Windows until all your drivers are installed and the hardware has demonstrated stability, so maybe a day or two. What model of ECS board did you try, by the way?

For what it's worth, Apple computers are no slouches in the area of graphic design.

I'd think about grabbing one now that will dual boot XP. I suspect that would be a shrewd move in the current environment if you don't like Vista.

mechBgon said:

I tried out XP Pro x64 Edition on my Asus A8N-E for a little while. It seemed to work just fine, although I would much rather use 64-bit Vista (and do) for various reasons. At any rate, with an nVidia-based board such as the M2N series, it should be pretty straightforward. Install Windows as usual, install the appropriate nVidia nForce chipset driver package (but I'd recommended you decline the SW storage drivers and Network Access Manager), reboot. Then install your video drivers and reboot again. Then activate Windows over the Internet, then patch it up...

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I just realized that I in my OP I never really mentioned that what I'll be using is an OEM version of Win XP Pro x64 with SP2. (Added to OP)

mechBgon said:

...In the case of my nForce4 Ultra-based board, there was no need to provide SATA drivers during Windows Setup, but in the event you pick something with an AHCI mode available, be aware that WinXP Setup will need drivers spoon-fed to it on a floppy diskette (how arcane!) or else change the SATA controller to non-AHCI mode (which is changed in the motherboard's BIOS menus). some info I put together on SATA, drivers, and Windows setup in case it helps Vista's setup is AHCI-aware and won't normally have an issue with it, but XP isn't.

I suggest not activating Windows until all your drivers are installed and the hardware has demonstrated stability, so maybe a day or two. What model of ECS board did you try, by the way?

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Emphasis mine.

It is a µATX ECS GeForce6100PM-M2 Motherboard v2.0. I'll spare you the details of my comms with ECS but I will say that they obfuscated and did everything in their power to keep me from understanding the real problem, including but not limited to • not wanting me to attempt a manual driver install and • promising to email me links to viable drivers while repeatedly sending me broken web pages filled with server errors from two continents (in different languages). • They actually never sent me a single link to a page capable of displaying a link. I attempted to view all of the pages linked to on two different machines under two different OSs using four different browsers. In short (oh, I guess it's too late for that) they did everything they could to prevent me from installing drivers that they knew could not work.

I eventually found the latest drivers they alluded to on my own and DLed them from the ECS website in spite of the assistance I got from their tech support. I unpacked them and Dirdiffed it's directory tree against the VGA driver tree on the CD included with the board. The directory structure, filenames and filetimes were all virtually identical -- the only difference being the creation date of an inconsequential thumbnail db file.

Fortunately, I made voice recordings of all of my calls to them in their entirety (as did they). Instead of going through the regular return red tape I just made a FRAUD complaint to VISA which they responded to very quickly.

Sub_Umbra said:

Instead of going through the regular return red tape I just made a FRAUD complaint to VISA which they responded to very quickly.

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Well played...

I just realized that I in my OP I never really mentioned that what I'll be using is an OEM version of Win XP Pro x64 with SP2. (Added to OP)

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No worries. XP Pro x64 is OEM-only, so that's implicit

As a general rule, you're best off downloading the drivers from the maker of the motherboard's chipset, not from the motherboard maker themselves. Ditto for video chipsets. So for an Asus M2N-series, for example, that means getting the motherboard drivers from nVidia, not Asus. And if you teamed that up with an eVGA-brand GeForce 9600GT video card, you'd get your video drivers from nVidia (the maker of the 9600GT chip), not from eVGA.

For the ECS motherboard in question, it isn't fantastically obvious, but it's an nForce 4-series chipset, and the WinXP Pro x64 driver package is located here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_winxp64_8.26_11.09.html

With that installed, next up would be video drivers, I think this is the one: http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp64_169.21_whql.html

By getting the drivers from the chipset vendor, you get the freshest ones. That's probably all water under the bridge at this point as regards the ECS, of course but it also applies to pretty much any motherboard you can buy for the CPU and RAM you've got.

Remember that the SATA controller for modern boards will probably have an AHCI mode. If you want, you can disable AHCI and put the SATA controllers into a "legacy" mode that's natively recognized by WinXP Setup. Or you can hitch up a floppy diskette drive, press the F6 key at the first blue screen of Windows XP Setup, and then provide appropriate AHCI-mode drivers on a floppy during Windows Setup. I think the ECS board is old enough not to have AHCI functionality, but expect to find it on the latest-generation motherboards.

mechBgon said:

...As a general rule, you're best off downloading the drivers from the maker of the motherboard's chipset, not from the motherboard maker themselves. Ditto for video chipsets...

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Wow, thanks for stating that. It makes all the sense in the world...yet it never would have occurred to me on my own. If you build a box and then sit around 3-4 years and you go to build another you find you're on a whole 'nother planet. I wish I could call myself a hacker but I'm just a hack.

Thanks guys -- I'm glad I started this thread.

If you need a stable,reliable motherboard brand..look at Gigabyte motherboards. I have every PC at home(still living with mom and dad) running Gigabyte boards.They're wonderful in comparison to the Asus motherboards we had before.(don't even remind me of those nightmare days...).

Also,I'd agree with using Tyan boards. I've never owned one,but I think that would be a good choice.

Your having problems with the VGA drivers right? Why don't you buy an x64 compatible graphics card?(besides the integrated geforce) sorry if this has been answered.

Sir Lightalot said:

Your having problems with the VGA drivers right? Why don't you buy an x64 compatible graphics card?(besides the integrated geforce) sorry if this has been answered.

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That sounds doable. Yet another idea I hadn't thought of. Thanks. If I did that how would I get Win to quit telling me it has discovered 'New Hardware' (the geforce on the mobo) at every boot?

Sub_Umbra said:

That sounds doable. Yet another idea I hadn't thought of. Thanks. If I did that how would I get Win to quit telling me it has discovered 'New Hardware' (the geforce on the mobo) at every boot?

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If you ran the video driver installer I linked to already (namely this one), then this New Hardware may be the secondary video output being detected. When it does that, try giving it the location to which the drivers got unpacked in the first place, which IIRC would be something like C:\nVidia\WinXPx64\169.21 by default.

If you didn't run the driver installer yet, give that a shot If it doesn't seem to be the correct driver package for the onboard video, then some trial-&-error might be the swiftest solution, or I can ask some nVidia specialist dudes which GeForce core they stuck in there. You could also run the system through Microsoft Update, which has drivers for some common hardware, and run the Custom update to see if it has drivers for the onboard video.

Thanks. I have the drivers you linked to a few days ago. I'm going to give them a shot soon.

I just installed the two new nVidia driver packages.

Complete success!

This is terrific. It's like a huge stone has been lifted off my chest. I've been wrestling with this issue for over two weeks!

I'd like to thank everyone who read and contributed to this thread. When I started this thread it was as a last resort. I was throughly fried and had exhausted all the possibilities that I was aware of. I am always amazed at the collective wisdom of the members of CPF.

Thanks again to all of you.

Sub