Computer Questions: Motherboard Upgrade, and "Incorrect Drive A type" error? (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

Hi all,

I'm in the slow process of upgrading my computer, wich has been neglected for the last 5 years. As I upgraded to Windows XP, I've found out that most of my products had been discontinued.

So, the next, and last big three things on the list are as follows. Hard Drive(11GB's to 80GB's), MotherBoard(p2 400 to P4 1.4GHZ), and ATI (All In Wonder Pro 8MB to All in Wonder Radeon 64MB).'

But I'm a bit confused about the Motherboard upgrade. I plan to have a proffesional install it, but what type of board should I get? I can look up the specs for my current one, but I beleive it's serial was SSE40BX, and as mentioned earlier, it was an Intel Pentium 2, 400 MGHZ board. I beleive it has 5 PCI slots, two AGP slots, two USB slots, and 3 RAM Slots. I'm also wondering as to what a new motherboard should cost me...

Finally, Around the time I upgraded to Win ME when it was first released, I started seeing an error when I rebooted my machine manually. "Incorrect Drive A Type - F2 to run Setup, F1 to Resume". I NEVER change anything in my setup information, so I don't know why this info is suddenly showing up. If I turn of the computer, turn it on again, the message never shows up, only when I restart. The problem continues when I upgraded to XP. Any ideas?

Thanks !

 

[Duncan Barth]

If you're going to have to replace the motherboard, CPU, RAM hard drive and video card of a machine, you're probably better off just biting the bullet and buying a new machine. The parts that you mentioned make up most of the cost of a new computer (minus monitor) anyway.

With a new machine, you'll probably end up with a longer warranty, a set of components that have been tested together, and a single point of contact to yell at when things go wrong.

As to your boot problem, sounds like there is something messed up in the BIOS. Hard to say what it is without looking to see if the settings are changing between startups, and other details of the configuration.

 

[Brett DiMichele]

Duncan raises a good point..
Building your own PC can be fun if you are into it. But with
the price of PC's these days you can buy the "box" loaded and
still shell out less than 2K and have the latest and greatest.
If you decide to just replace the Box, go with MicronPC
(Link Removed) they cater to the I.T Professional/ SOHO/
Gammer and Graphics Designer.
They build systems that YOU custom tailer (every single option)
and they use only the best name brand parts even down to the
Power Supply.
I paid $1200.00 for my Micron Millennia TS ExTreme which is
running an Intel Genuine MoBo (Brookdale I/O) with a Socket
478 Pentium 4 (1.8 Ghz) with 256 Megs of 266Mhz PC2100 DDR
Ram (Micron is one of the 3 largest RAM Manufacturers) and
it also has the Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and a VisionTek X-Tasy
GeForce 3 64 Meg DDR running 4x AGP (Nvidia Card) a DVD-Rom
and a NEC CD-RW and everything else...
Damn good computer for CHEAP! and not one grey market obscure
brand item in the PC anywhere!

 

[DeathStar1]

This may sound strange, but my parents are not that computer literate. They're just starting to get into it, when I've been on 'em for the past 10 years almost. So long as they agree to purchasing upgrades because they think it's cheaper than buying a new cmoputer, that's just fine with me . Luckilly I don't have to refute to this option too many times, only when I'm low on funds.
Besides, I don't mind upgrading it piece by piece. One of these days, I wouldn't mind getting into side buisness of building computers. If I had the money to throw away to make up for the mistakes, I'd gladly experiment with it some more .
But, that dosn't look like it'll be happening anytime in the near future, so I'll set'll for upgrading the peices I know how to install properly, like the TV Tuner, HD and memory .

 

[DeathStar1]

As to the other post, I only updated my Bios Once. Everything went smoothly, as per the instructions I followed. If I knew where to look, I'd give ya some more info on my Bios settings...