Recently I upgraded my 486DX4/100 PC with a secondhand Pentium 166 CPU and a TX motherboard with a 586 BIOS chip. The only other change to the system was the change to a Legend PCI video card with a TV tuner in it. Strange things have been happening since the upgrade.

After installation of the motherboard, just about every device had a conflict. These were fixed but other problems with hardware such as floppy drives, the CDROM, etc were loaded twice. Under advice, because of so many problems, which once solved seemed to produce different ones, I reformatted my hard disk and re-installed Win95 and other software.

The problems I now get are: Every time new software is installed and the system reboots, it hangs. The joystick on my AWE64 sound card no longer works - the Control Panel Settings indicates it is not connected but is working properly without any hardware conflicts. (The on-board joystick connector has been disabled.) Some DOS-based software which previously worked, no longer does. The CDROM drive regularly disappears and only returns after a reboot. And my computer has 32mb of RAM but in Windows it only registers it as 16mb (there are two 16mb chips but they are different brands).

I think the cause is probably related to a message I get just after the PC does the memory check- before anything is loaded - “UPDATING ESCD - Fail”.

I have spoken to at least 10 technicians around town and at work re this message without any satisfactory answer. One told me it was a CDROM-related message which it isn’t; some said it sounded familar but didn’t know what it meant; and one said he thought it was to do with the BIOS but couldn’t elaborate.

Even though the motherboard is to be replaced, I would like to understand what is happening and what the cause(s) are. Probably the closest to a reasonable answer I’ve received is that the BIOS is stuffed and needs replacing (although one technician told me it is probably close to impossible to dig up the BIOS which is compatible with the
motherboard).

I would like to understand what is happening - can you enlighten me?

ESCD stands for ‘Extended System Configuration Data’. This is a four-kilobyte area of memory that is used to store data for ‘Plug and Play’ devices. This area has to be writeable at runtime and in your case, it appears that it isn’t. This may account for the dropping out of your CD-ROM drive (if it is ‘Plug and Play’ and can’t be loaded into ESCD then it may not load). The Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 card is ‘Plug and Play’ compatible and the reason that the joystick port is not working may be that the card can’t be loaded into ESCD. The ESCD failing could be caused by a number of things. It all really depends on how your computer is set up. The most probable answer though would be that it is a hardware problem (like the BIOS). As for the memory problem, it is doubtful that the problem is with the ESCD but it is probably a problem with the memories compatibility with the motherboard. Chips that are compatible with a 486 motherboard are not necessarily compatible with a Pentium motherboard, this is probably why the computer doesn’t recognise you have 32mb of RAM.