hmmm...interesting...I'll try what's mentioned in those links...it's interesting you mention the acpi=off switch, my bios has acpi disabled as that was the only stable way I could get my w2k system to run games because of IRQ conflicts that would cause BSoD with sound/video conflicts, would I still need the switch if it's disabled in the bios? and would the noscsi switch as mentioned in the other thread affect my pci SATA controller? but thanks for the help so far