When in windows ME, CD in drive crashes system. Wanted to reformat my HD, boot disk says problem with CD. Correct prompt comes up for drive in DOS, strange dir. Fdisk freezes, need to reboot. I have changed over CD drives, still problem. Think it could be the cable, Mother board is a Shuttle Spacewalker HOT-661/P, or the cable. CD set to slave, one large EIDE HD and 2 SCSI drives Other mysterious problem, is that my monitor has blue tinge in the lower right hand corner, I have swapped graphics cards and monitors over and it is still there, which points to the MB again. Help much appreciated.

Yes, that does sound like the PCI\IDE controller is crapping out on you. Enter Bios-Setup (CMOS) - Chipset Features Setup and change setting for Passive Release to Enabled and see if that helps. Have you tried removing the SCSI card? If not, do so and try booting from a Win 9x boot disk. Note whether the monitor issue goes away and \or the CD-ROM is now recogised. Post back here after you have done those two things.

Thanks for the response, passive release is already enabled. I have discovered the monitor problem is due to the proximity of a speaker magnet. I have restored a previous hardware configuration. So now I am left with the CDROM crashing, saying a CD in drive caused an exception 0E at 0028:704A98C1 in VXD, called from 0028:C182C670, which is double Dutch to me. The only other clue is SCSI controller Artop ATP-870UW PCI Bus master SCSI controller for NEC98, Error code 11 windows stopped reponding while atempting to start this device, so will not try to start it again. My main Windows drive is one of the SCSI drives. so hard to take out SCSI card. Please help me solve this conundrum. Ta Nils

Okay, it seems to resolve to a SCSI driver or BIOS problem. Uhm, the ATP870UW Ultra Wide SCSI-3 is odd, to say the least, and has very poor performance values. However, I think the primary issue is the NCR SCSI BIOS which has been dumped by virtually all motherboard makers because of the problems it causes. So, two suggestions: try updating the BIOS for the board first as that should dump the NCR SCSI BIOS. You can download the BIOS flash From Here. Make sure you read the documentation carefully and take all warnings seriously. If that doesn't do the trick, buy a decent From HereAdaptec SCSI adapter card.

Hmm, my HTML editor took a spaz. The links still work, though.

Thanks Doof, Am thinking about taking my life in my hands and flashing the BIOS. I need to clarify the steps. 1. Make a startup disk in safemode to avoid memory management utilities. 2. Delete autoexec.bat and config sys and replace with Bios update. 3. Boot up at dos prompt type in AWDFLASH(bios update file name). 4. Save current BIOS. 5. Proceed and pray!! Here is a list of the files on boot disk made Win ME safe mode. ASPI2DOS.SYS ASPI4DOS.SYS ASPI8DOS.SYS ASPI8U2.SYS ASPICD.SYS BTCDROM.SYS BTDOSM.SYS CHECKSR COMMAND EBD EBDUNDO EXTRACT FDISK FINDRAMD FIXIT FLASHPT.SYS HIBINV HIMEM.SYS OAKCDROM.SYS RAMDRIVE.SYS README SETRAMD BIOS files Awd776, an aplication 661UPD readme 6610S164, a bin file

If you have an older DOS boot disk with only command.com visible on it, It would be less cluttered to but the Awdflash.exe and ?????.bin files on it to do the upgrade.