Right when installing windows 2000 on the new box (A8R32 MVP Deluxe, AMD 64 X2 4200+, 2 GB of DDR 400 CL2.5, 160GB Barracuda SATA II), i ran into a few pesky problems.
1.: After setup, it does not show the second CPU
2.: Changing the machine type in the hardware settings to something else kills the windows installation (won't boot in any mode)
3.: All connected HDD's suffered from the short LBA mode (only see 128GB of the disk)
4.: When the HDDs are under heavy load, the audio from the onboard audio chipset comes distorted.
5.: 3GB of RAM kill the system configuration. You can boot, but some system device will fail due to a "Out of Ressources" problem.
[Solutions]
1.: Make sure that before running the windows setup, you have enabled APIC and ACPI 2.0 in the Bios. Disable dynamic overclocking (A.I.)
2.: See point one.
3.: Windows 2000 installs the wrong driver for the SATA controller when you do setup in "PATA compatible" mode. After Windows 2000 installation is finished, browse to the "System" => "Device Manager", and check out the IDE Controllers. You will find a "standard PCI IDE Dual Channel Controler" or something alike. Insert the driver cd that came with the motherboard, and do a "update driver" with "search in removable media". It will suddenly find a better driver, and after its installed, reboot. Now the HDDs should show with their full size and all SATA II features working.
4.: No solution yet - maybe get a PCI Audio Card instead of the on-board one? If anyone else knows how to fix this, drop us a msg in the guests section.
5.: I played with the settings for half a day but could not get the system to work completely with 3GBs of RAM. However, since when you use four double sided DIMMs, the clockrate drops to DDR333 anyway. So 2GB will have to do, and suddenly there are enough ressources for everything again. It kind of puzzles me why it appears to have less ressources (Memory blocks it assigns to hardware) with more RAM.. probably its installing some additional driver if you have more than 2GBs of RAM, and that driver assigns a memory block something else needs. In my case, the system booted and all, but one device did not work because "out of ressources" - and it was the gfx card.
So, just take out that additional GB, and have fun with the 2GB remaining. They should be enough anyway
