Motherboard ID During Bootup

  • Thread starter Thread starter traxless
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traxless

Seems that during boot-up, XP does not show that DOS screen with the
Motherboard ID number in the lower left corner as did Win98. And I'm
needing that number. I've tried all the ways I know to see that
number, but to no avail.

Btw, I've used several utilities (i.e., FreshDiagnose) to find it,
but the number I need is only visible during this boot-up sequence.

Any suggestions?
 
Hi

The motherboard ID should show up - have you tried pressing the 'Pause' key straight after boot-up?
 
Thanks for the Post Will. Yes I have tried that and I still don't
see that initial DOS screen. Tried it about 10 times actually ...
LOL. Maybe11 times will work. Take care.
 
there is no "initial dos screen" because dos is not loaded first, as it
was in Win9x. in fact, dos is never loaded, there is no more dos.

what "motherboard id" are you refering to? are you refering to the
startup diagnostics, and the "press xx to enter setup" prompt? most
modern bios' have a "quick start" option that XP always enables, and
thus the "press..." prompt displays for like one 10th of a second. what I
look for is the keyboard lights to blink at reboot, that's when I press
DEL [in my case] to enter the bios setup. you've got to be quick tho. and
you've got to know what key to press. usually it's DEL or F2.

if what you want to find out is your motherboard model number, a good diag
tool like Aida32 will tell you that, along with TONS of other stuff.
google for it. it's worth having regardless...
 
That explains why I don't see that "dos" screen. LOL ... should have
figured that out myself. I think I'll try Aida32 ... I've seen it
recommended on a MVP site that I often visit.

I want to update my MB bios (1995) and Micronpc.com has 4-5 different
Bios upgrades for the make and model of my board which is a GVC
DR7423E. So once I find the exact model number, I can do this
upgrade. I'm close to surrender on this issue. It's what I get for
getting a hand-me-down computer that needex lots of TLC and without
any documentation.

Thanks for your guidance
 
BE WARNED that if you update your bios you MAY need to do an
"XP Repair Reinstall", or what's known as an in-place upgrade.

google for those terms to find out the procedure, and print it out just in
case. after flashing the new bios, if it won't boot into xp you'll need
to do the repair install.

a new bios may be so different that XP needs a different HAL installed
[that's a low level piece of software that the rest of XP relies upon].
The only way to do that is rerun the XP setup. This is almost garenteed
if the new bios is ACPI compliant and the old one was APM [which is likely
if you're going from a 5-6 year old one to a new one]. These are power
control protocols; go into control_panel | power and see if either of
these terms show up in the dialog - new machines are all ACPI, win95 era
machines were APM. another way to check is via device manager, choose
"view devices by connection", the top item will say either Advanced Power
Management or ACPI Devices.

My motto: if it ain't broke don't fix it.
 
Well Amigo ... you NG post convinced me to leave this alone! Thanks
for the guidance and the alert. I not even interested now! My
fingers are smart enough to leave this alone.
 
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