# Upgrading Dad's Machine-- Will there be any compatibility issue ?



## bukaida (Oct 8, 2013)

My old machine is now used by my DAD for typing and browsing. Recently I have installed skype for video chatting with my brother and sister who stay abroad. The computer has a Intel original 865GBF Motherboard with 2.4/512/533 P4 CPU. The board supports 4 DDR 1 RAMs upto 400 MHz. Now I am having 2 x 1GB RAM (400) and 2 x 256MB(333 MHz from old MB) in dual channel mode running windows XP SP3. As the old P4 CPUs are now available at throwaway price so I bought a 2.8/1MB/800 socket 478 P4 cpu and two 512MB PC3200 DDR1(@Rs.750). However before putting them in the board, I like to know your opinion about the compatibility issue and real performance upgrade (if any). Please help.
PS. Recently the cabinet and power supply of this machine is upgraded to Cooler master Elite 311 + Corsair vs 450 . So additional power(if any required) should not be an issue.


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## quicky008 (Oct 8, 2013)

Check Intel's website for a list of cpus supported by this board-its quite possible that you may have to upgrade its bios if you wish to install a faster and more powerful CPU.


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## Cilus (Oct 8, 2013)

You can go with the update.


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## bukaida (Oct 8, 2013)

Cilus said:


> You can go with the update.


I have this bios update *BF86510A.86A.0077.P25.EB.EXE* from intel. Will this make my MoBo compatible with the CPU? Will I get any real performance boost? Does the latest bios incorporate all the previous bios updates?


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## quicky008 (Oct 8, 2013)

bukaida said:


> I have this bios update *BF86510A.86A.0077.P25.EB.EXE* from intel. Will this make my MoBo compatible with the CPU? Will I get any real performance boost? Does the latest bios incorporate all the previous bios updates?



Updating the bios is not recommended unless its absolutely necessary.If something goes wrong during the update process,your motherboard will be rendered useless.


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## bukaida (Oct 9, 2013)

quicky008 said:


> Updating the bios is not recommended unless its absolutely necessary.If something goes wrong during the update process,your motherboard will be rendered useless.



I will update the bios only if the processor is not supported. From the Intel's site, it seems that 800 MHz 1MB is not supported without bios update for this board. Is the latest bios contains all the previous bios updates ?


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## quicky008 (Oct 9, 2013)

bukaida said:


> I will update the bios only if the processor is not supported. From the Intel's site, it seems that 800 MHz 1MB is not supported without bios update for this board. Is the latest bios contains all the previous bios updates ?



In all probability,it does-most of these bios updates appear to be "incremental" in nature i.e. they incorporate all previously released updates.

If you do update the bios,please keep us posted about the outcome.


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## bukaida (Oct 10, 2013)

quicky008 said:


> In all probability,it does-most of these bios updates appear to be "incremental" in nature i.e. they incorporate all previously released updates.
> 
> If you do update the bios,please keep us posted about the outcome.



Sure, I will be visiting my home in this Lakshmi puja. I will post the result here. 
Happy Durga puja to you all.


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## bukaida (Oct 16, 2013)

Guys, installed the cpu and RAM in the machine. As the bios was already the latest version so need not have to do the bios update. However two peculiar problems arises-- 
1. When I install the extreme graphics driver for 865GBF, with the P4 2.8/1MB/800 MHz HT cpu , the graphics crashed after trying to enter the desktop in win XP. In VGA mode and also in safe mode, it is running perfectly. No problem if I revert back to old 2.4/1MB/533MHz.

2. If I upgrade the os to win 7 pro, everything works fine but there is no audio or video driver support for 865 GBF. XP drivers does not work.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?


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## quicky008 (Oct 16, 2013)

That's weird-try booting your pc into Linux (using a live distro such as linux mint 15) and check whether you experience such issues with it or not.Which version of windows xp do you have?I'd suggest that you use Windows xp SP3(if you're not using it already) as it incorporates many critical updates and bug fixes.


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## bukaida (Oct 17, 2013)

quicky008 said:


> That's weird-try booting your pc into Linux (using a live distro such as linux mint 15) and check whether you experience such issues with it or not.Which version of windows xp do you have?I'd suggest that you use Windows xp SP3(if you're not using it already) as it incorporates many critical updates and bug fixes.



I am using SP3 only. The audio problem is sorted out by installing drivers in compatibility mode. The video problem was sorted for once when I installed the video driver provided by Intel for development purpose (although a 845 driver ) manually by update driver operation. However that also crashed while installing office 2007 (do not know why). The win7 version is win7pro. The bus speed is now 400MHz with the new CPU ( earlier was 333 MHz). Can that create a problem? Also disabling the HT in BIOS did not help. The MB has a AGP 8x slot and so cannot update the graphics with a graphics card.


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## quicky008 (Oct 17, 2013)

bukaida said:


> I am using SP3 only. The audio problem is sorted out by installing drivers in compatibility mode. The video problem was sorted for once when I installed the video driver provided by Intel for development purpose (although a 845 driver ) manually by update driver operation. However that also crashed while installing office 2007 (do not know why). The win7 version is win7pro. The bus speed is now 400MHz with the new CPU ( earlier was 333 MHz). Can that create a problem? Also disabling the HT in BIOS did not help. The MB has a AGP 8x slot and so cannot update the graphics with a graphics card.



If the drivers were incompatible,they would not have worked even when u were using your older 2.4/1MB/533MHz CPU.Whats odd about this situation is that the problem starts only when you use the newer cpu,which might be an indication that the cpu itself is faulty.If you can't get it to work in xp ,you may try installing windows 2000 sp4 on your system-i think most of the applications you use in XP will also work in win 2000,so hopefully,there will not be any major compatibility issues.

And AGP cards are still available in the market even though they are getting increasingly difficult to find nowadays-but i think they cost too much and so buying them won't be worthwhile.


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## bukaida (Oct 17, 2013)

quicky008 said:


> If the drivers were incompatible,they would not have worked even when u were using your older 2.4/1MB/533MHz CPU.Whats odd about this situation is that the problem starts only when you use the newer cpu,which might be an indication that the cpu itself is faulty.If you can't get it to work in xp ,you may try installing windows 2000 sp4 on your system-i think most of the applications you use in XP will also work in win 2000,so hopefully,there will not be any major compatibility issues.
> 
> And AGP cards are still available in the market even though they are getting increasingly difficult to find nowadays-but i think they cost too much and so buying them won't be worthwhile.



I have reformatted and re-installed win 7 pro freshly(previous one was a upgrade on XP). The display is installed using the 2000 version of 865 GBF extreme graphics 2 manually by updating the VGA driver with HAVE DISK option. Also I have disabled all the windows update features as previously it started after an update. The display was working fine for 20-25 minutes and then it started crashing. As I have read in a forum that the AERO in win7 requires DX10 onwards and 865 supports maximum upto DX9 so I used a basic theme in place of AERO supported theme. Till last forty minutes, it is working fine. Keeping my finger crossed as any temporary solution will bring trouble to my Dad who was happy with the old configuration.

P.S- Nope it crashed again with the message " the display driver(Null) has stopped working, close your program and restart". After restart, it automatically works for sometimes.


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## whitestar_999 (Oct 17, 2013)

i faced something similar to this situation when intel graphics repeatedly crashed on my 865mobo+P4 3Ghz but in safe mode when inter driver is not loaded everything worked fine.my guess was it was due to some mobo damage by sudden voltage fluctuation once when i was using PC without inverter & directly connected to mains.in the end instead of spending time & money on that old system i simply found a way to enable audio(& any other such service) in safe mode & at the cost of sacrificing intel graphics driver made my system workable again.i could do that because for my primary purpose of browsing,downloading & office tasks intel graphics was not essential but not so sure about skype.i say forget about new processor & keep using your old processor with increased ram which will boost performance more compared to upgrading processor anyway.


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## quicky008 (Oct 18, 2013)

Some pci display adapters are available in the market which may work in your case-they are pretty cheap too,so you may get one of those and see whether it makes a difference or not.Here's one i found on ebay:

8 MB PCI VGA Card PCIVGA Card | eBay


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## bukaida (Oct 18, 2013)

whitestar_999 said:


> i faced something similar to this situation when intel graphics repeatedly crashed on my 865mobo+P4 3Ghz but in safe mode when inter driver is not loaded everything worked fine.my guess was it was due to some mobo damage by sudden voltage fluctuation once when i was using PC without inverter & directly connected to mains.in the end instead of spending time & money on that old system i simply found a way to enable audio(& any other such service) in safe mode & at the cost of sacrificing intel graphics driver made my system workable again.i could do that because for my primary purpose of browsing,downloading & office tasks intel graphics was not essential but not so sure about skype.i say forget about new processor & keep using your old processor with increased ram which will boost performance more compared to upgrading processor anyway.



Exactly same situation here. Never thought this could be the cause. The previous SMPS (Iball) was burnt few months ago taking away my 5200 AGP card as they were directly connected to a main. So I have upgraded the PSU to corsair vs 450 this time and a 600VA UPS (APC) was purchased to support the system.
Now coming back to the result in the morning today--

1.  Replacing back my old 2.4/1MB/533 back made everything work (even the audio and video) under win7 although the bus speed has gone down to 333(from 400 MHz) though I am having all 400Mz RAM and 533Mz CPU, due to Intel's peculiar architecture. Now I think they(MB+CPU) are married for life. So my Dad told me to let them live happily  

2. Just when I was 100% sure that the culprit was the cpu, I gave it to my friend who has exactly the same MB and 1GB (256 x 4) DDR 400 RAM under winXP SP3. It is running there without any hiccup till last 6 hours continuously. So I decided to give it to him.

So at the end of the day, my Rs. 300 processor upgrade was not successful but gave some unexplained and illogical behavior.


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