RC410L/800-M and Vista

[podmon]

I'm trying to install Vista on an RC410L/800-M using the internal video. Irregardless of whether I install under XP or booting from the DVD when Vista goes to reboot itself, I get one click on the monitor and then a black screen. In safe mode I get all the loading messages and then a click and a message saying Please wait.

When running the Vista Upgrade advisor I noticed that if you do it before the ATI drivers are loaded onto XP the video card is flagged as having only 32MB and not good enough for Aero. After loading current drivers the advisor says all is good. Strange..

Does anyone have any advice on things to try? The black screen gives no indication of whats wrong and there are no traces in the partition I'm installing to.

[Jussi]

Try to increase the "share memory size" in BIOS to 128MB.

[podmon]

Yes, I have set the shared memory at 128Mb.

[podmon]

By accident I took one of the drives I got an incomplete install and put it back in a system with AMD 1.1Gz Thunderbird and 256Mb of Ram and the install took off where it stopped finishing expanding files and going all the way, completely installed. I would guess from this that there is an incompatibility in the ECS motherboard with internal video and the Vista Beta2 distribution. I hope someone from ECS investigates. Meanwhile I'm happy cause I've activated my beta install so MS will send me the RC1 release. Soon I'm going to try a PCI-E video card in the ECS RC410L/800-M and see if that solves the Vista install glich.

[Jeff Alessi]

Hi, I have the same system board also and had the same problems, however after alot of drama I have found a fix for the ECS RC410L/800-M ver 2.0

Download the Bios upgrade STD-8110.ROM the location for this is at: ecs.com.tw/dlfile/faq_file/STD-8110.zip

Flash the bios, then copy the contents of Vista to your harddrive and proceed with the installation!

If you try to install Vista off the DVD you may enconter a error (Setup failed to open the windows image file)


Good Luck!

Jeff Alessi

[podmon]

I got the bios STD-8110.ROM and after seeing advice on only using the DOS based update program temporarily rigged a floppy and got it updated. The bios now indicates a 6/21/2006 date, right? In searching on this bios, which is not indicated as the most current bios on the ECS website, I found that it supposedly addresses a problem with DDR2 667Mz memory. I had a bringup problem where I went through 4 sticks of PNY PC5400 memory before giving up and installing one stick of PC4200. I need to make a good backup on this machine and then retry the Vista install. Thanks a lot for your "drama".