Okay, solved one problem, and now we are back to the original one.

It keeps crashing on the installation of windows XP. I have no idea what to do about this one. Any tips on this?

I was able to go into the bios and check my temps without it crashing, and then successfully exit (this was without the HD hooked up though) and temps are around 30 c, and look pretty steady to me. mobo is on the bag it came in, which is on top of a sheet of cardboard, only have one stick of ram in. Power doesnt seem to be a problem.

Edit : Was back to it not posting, but then I noticed the cd rom drive was whirring endlessly, so I popped the windows xp out and rebooted , then voila, it POSTS. It gives me a message saying CMOS checksum bad and press f1 to go into setup , f2 to load default values. I of course, press f2. I have two drives. One is a dvd drive, and the second is a dvd rw. Maybe this is an issue? Still crashing/freezing on installation.

Switched the drives, same thing. Now its crashing on POST. Also, I have a SATA maxtor HDD , and in DOS , its reading it as an IDE drive.

Crashing to what bud? Blue screen? Popup message? Freeze?

What did you use to check your drive in DOS? DOS programmes are rarely made these days, and many would have been written before SATA was released.

Can you also make sure nothing else is connected, except for what you need. For example, if you require a CD-ROM, just use one on IDE and not both.

RMA'ing the motherboard through ASUS. *sighs* Im out of a computer for a few weeks.

This has been a horrible first experience for me with AMD and ASUS. It has me reconsidering intel and nvidia.

DMA controller error
Fatal Error- System Halted

What's this?

No hope on the RMA , Im broke , so I cant afford shipping it to them , in addition , there is no serial number on the motherboard , which ASUS told me may mean it will not be covered by warranty. MWAVE sold me a fake motherboard?

Just easier to buy a new one. Will spend the month without my computer. Just glad there is more than one available in the house. No gaming for me though. Stay far away from MWAVE. I have already emailed them about this and have gotten no reply. No answer on their phone either.

As you may have guessed, DMA (Direct Memory Access) is a nasty error Night. It can sometimes be caused by a PCI/AGP card but in these cases, there error normally comes with a DMA number, which would tell you which card it is. To make sure, leave nothing but the graphics card in your expansion slots (if you haven't already tried), or try using another graphics card just certain it is the motherboard (even though motherboard is most likely, since this is where the DMA Controller is placed). I have been with ASUS and AMD for a long time, and I have found them very reliable. Did the packaging of the motherboard appear to be open when it arrived?

Edit : sorry about the delay, I had three art quizzes to take online, and had to make that a priority. Even then, I missed a quiz. :s

Upon closer recall , no , the package was not sealed. Upon examination of it now... ( I use a letter opener, leaving two halves of any seals on a package stuck there) there is no seal on it. I have already attempted to contact mwave, as they have sold this to me as a genuine new item from asus, but have recieved no replies to my emails. ASUS also informed me that there is usually a purple sticker on all of their motherboards with the serial number, and the absence of one on this motherboard was disturbing.

I am very upset now as I think mwave was very fraudulent with me. I am sending the motherboard to ASUS to get a replacement, but if it is not authentic , I fear it will not be covered under their warranty , and I wasted 150 bucks. There was no number on the DMA error, just appeared as I wrote it. I didnt use a dos program, just referred to the state the computer was in when it gave me the error... you know... black screen, little bit of graphics, like the American Microsystems or w/e icon , and white text.

To be more accurate about the crashes, it seems more like a freeze. Just... freezes. Unresponsive.