Need help with Athlon XP 1600+ and win2k

[Nuno]

It seems that everytime I try to upgrade my system, something goes wrong...

Here´s what´s hapenning:

I found an incredible bargain on a XP1600+ and I decided to antecipate the cpu upgrade I was planning for christmas. It is suposedly supported by my Asus A7V133 (rev 1.05).
So I flashed latest official bios (1007) still with a thunderbird 900, all went fine. I simply swapped the cpu´s, added a new cooler (spire copper base) and there you go. It booted up just fine (it displays Athlon XP1600+ no matter what the fsb is, even if it works at 1050 Mhz )
So I went into Win2k, even SSE was recognized, but I started to notice some instabilities. Games exited to the desktop, explorer crashed, even BSOD´s.
So I went and reinstalled win2k, AMD recomends it anyway. No change. Win2k is completely unusable.
The strange part of the question is that WinME on the other partition is completely stable It will even run 2dmark2001 loops for 2 hours without a itch, even when overclocked to 1503 Mhz! I´m actually typing this from winME, it´s up from some hours and I couldn´t notice any strange behaviour.

So here´s my system:
Asus A7V133(KT133A) rev 1.05 bios 1007
384 Mb SDRAM (PC166@133)
Athlon XP1600+
3DProphet 4500 (KyroII)
SbLive! Player1024
Maxtor 7200rpm 13.5 Gb as on Promise IDE controller
Seagate 5400rpm 30 Gb as master on primary via IDE
Samsung CDRW/DVD combo as master on secondary via IDE and Philips 40X CD-rom as slave on secondary via IDE
Generic floppy disk
win2k sp2
Latest drivers and bios for everything

Here´s what I tried:
Reinstall win2k
Underclock the chip to 1050 Mhz (100Mhz fsb)
Slow down memory timings
Tried another PC133 256Mb RAM stick only on the first DIMM
Tried another 300W power supply
Tryed 300W power supply only to motherboard, HDD and fans connected to another 250W ps
Several Via 4-1
DX7, DX8, DX8.1 beta
8.xxx and 9.xxx Kyro drivers
Disabling ACPI on win2k (generic pc installation)
Flashing oldest A7V133 bios supporting AXP(1005A)

Please help. This is really anoying. Latest time I saw this happening was with a Lucky-star motherboard, winME worked fine and Win2k was a disaster. I wouldn´t expect it from Asus.
If I can´t work it out, I might antecipate a bit my upgrade and get a Gigabyte 7VTXE (KT266A) and DDR memory (wife will kill me).

Thanks guys (and girls)

[The PIT]

The only thing I can see you haven't listed is turning down the memory timings. Although the Bios may support your cpu does your motherboard revision. I can get bios's for my Epox that support the Athlon XP however according there motherboard compatabilty list my motherboard doesn't support it. The bios seems to a generatic bios for several versions of the KT266/A chipset.

[Nuno]

Hi The PIT, thanks for replying.
Actually I did slow down memory timings to 3-3-3, check above...
A7V133 rev 1.05 and above do support Palominos, so says Asus. That´s why I pointed the board revision...
The freaky thing is as I said WinME working A-Ok. That leaves me wondering about some bios bug.

[Nuno]

Ok I "fixed" it. The process involved buying a ECS K7S5A and just swapping the motherboards. Everything is working as it should.
Only using SDRAM for now, but the XP1600+ is already doing the 1800+ dance at 1540 Mhz...
Impressive board for a almost insultuous price.

Second time Asus lets me down. Never again.

[CHHAS]

I'm happy with my K7S5A too, it's a really nice board, no more 4in1's

[Fat Tone]

Nuno - which version of the board did you get? When looking at a show a couple of weeks ago, several vendors said the version with the built in nic wasn't available anymore due to all the problems it caused.

CHHAS - did you get your nics working?

Cheers
Tony.

[CHHAS]

Yep, all working fine after a reinstall

[Nuno]

No NIC here. Don´t really noticed the revision of the board.