[janlafata]

I've had a hard time making up my mind lately whether I want to switch from XP x64, which is real nice and fast, and Vista Basic x64. I chose Basic since I don't run Aero or media center anyway and it really saves on resources.

The problem has been that I have been picking some motherboards that are not compatible with Vista. It's like, when Vista first came out, nobody mentioned that, besides all of the hardware requirements you had to have, your motherboard needs to be compatible also.

I've already been burned once when I bought an ABIT KV-85 board a month ago. Their tech assured me it was compatible. It wasn't, and I had all kinds of problems. It's on it's way back to the factory now for some kind of replacement, hopefully.

Next I bought an MSI board, the K8MM3-V, that the vendor assured me would work with Vista. I never got around to officially checking on that but it didn't matter, because after I installed it, it was dead on arrival. So I sent it back to MSI and basically had to beg them to send me another one without charging me any extra money. Long story there. But basically what I ended up with was, since they don't make these boards new anymore is a refurbished K8MM3-V. Wow, lucky me!

At this point, just to cover myself, I also ordered my old standby brand, an ASUS K8V-MX. I should add, at this point, that the reason I keep ordering all of these older Socket 754 motherboards is that allows me to continue to use my AMD Athlon X64 processor and I don't have the money to go out and spend on a new board with an updated socket, processor, memory etc.

So anyway I decided for now, just to stick with ASUS, throw Vista Basic x64 on it and declare myself good to go. But I immediately started getting a few glitches after installation. After a half a days worth of phone calls, I finally learned the truth about the ASUS from one of their more smarter techs. It just wasn't compatble with Vista! My heart sank.

So I went to plan B and threw on XP x64 on it and it ran great. I then figured I could run with that maybe for at least another 5 years before I get to a point where I have to decide on the latest crap that Microsoft comes out with or maybe go Linux.

But having had enough dealings with Vista, especially the x64 Basic, I had kind of learned to like it, even with all of it's faults. And the Vista basic x64 ran much faster than the x32 versions I tried. So I started looking around the internet try to find a Socket 754, Athlon x64 motherboard that was Vista compatible. I never did find one, or ran out of time or maybe just gave up.

Then it hit me. I had just gotten the refurbished MSI board back and I thought "I wonder if this thing is Vista compatable" So I called their tech support and he assured me it was and even showed me on a web page that K8MM3-V was indeed VIsta compatible. Just Vista Basic compatible, but that was fine. That's what I wanted to run.

I installed it yesterday, then spent all morning today, downloading all of my Windows updates and SP1. I thought I was finally on my way. Then I noticed that windows update, never did install any drivers for my Creative Labs Audigy SE sound card, and it always had before. I didn't panic, so then I just ran the x64 Audigy driver I downloaded. I thought maybe it was just a glitch that Windows missed it.

But halfway through the installation, I got a message that said "cannot proceed with installation because there is no device installed" I thought, what the heck? then quickly proceeded to check in device manager. Sure enough, it wasn't even in there.

Still I didn't panic. I tried puttting the sound card in another of the three PCI slots. No go. It still didn't recognize it. Then I tried the third slot. Same thing. My heart sank even further. I immediately called MSI tech support and they walked me through a few things, like clearing the CMOS. Yeah big deal! That did nothing.

To top it off, I must say that the MSI techs didn't really seem totally interested in helping me solve my problem with an old board. So I called Microsoft. They were very helpful but still didn't have many clues as to why I was shipped a board with three possible dead PCI slots and one that would not recognize my sound card.. By the way, I did test my sound card in another PC, and it's fine. I also tried throwing in an older PCI sound card in my machine, to see if that would do it, but then Windows wouldn't even boot. The only thing the Microsoft guy could come up with was that maybe the sound card was incompatible with the motherboard. He said "It does happen".

So now I'm back on the phone with MSI tech support and they basically are saying, "Uhhhh, I don't think that could be it, uhhh!". So that's where I am at now. The MSI guy gave me an RMA number and told me to send it back and he'll personally test another refurbished board including the PCI slots. What a guy huh?

Do I trust them or this board at this point... No! Do I really want to pull out another board, wait a few weeks for MSI, then in the meantime, stick the ASUS back in for at least something to have, only to have to take it out again, when I get the MSI back?. Not really!

Final gripe... I just can't believe they would send me a board with three dead PCI slots. I did check out some settings on the BIOS, and saw nothing that I think would make those PCI slots live. I'm stumped! I've actually been able to find the same MSI board brand new at Provantage, so I'm kind of leaning on just buying that, since I believe, it is is a good board, if I can just get one to work right. And I really don't like using refurbished anything. That way I can still send back the broken MSI and have another sent to me that I can use as a backup.

At this point, any and all comments and suggestions are welcome. Also if you see any decent Socket 754. AMD 64, VIA chipset, Vista compatible boards out there, please let me know!