My friend also has same ECS PT800CE-A board which he bought from Fry's store. We replaced the board. The first board, when you save bios, it will not re-boot. With the new board, it saves and re-boots.
It also gave CPU clock speed error as everyone else got. That is fixed after pressing F6 in bios.

The most intriguing error is the "HARDWARE MALFUNCTION" error, which will show up any time with blue screen without any details. My friend is also using second PIC wireless NIC besides onboard. I advised him to remove PCI NIC to see if that fixes the problem.

I will appreciate if soemone knows how to fix this probme.

Regards.
P.Gill

pt800ce-a boards are trash i got one from frys as well it says on the box it supports ddr 400 but soon as you get the board you have to upgrade the bios asap if you have ddr400 because it will start to corrupt your harddrive data then there is a random chance that your bois will get corrupted then your board is garbage then like mine i got here they really shouldent ship a product that hasnt been tested properly if you look at the update history it has had countless updates within 2-3 month periods its a warning sign that the board maker wasnt paying to much attention to details but you get what you pay for though

Your mother board PT800CE-A problems

Yes, you are absolutely right. This board is a piece of junk. I finally figured out why we were getting Hardware Malfuntion blue screen. It was due to second NIC. My friend was using wireless PCI NIC besides onboard NIC. Once he unplugged PCI NIC, no more problems. This board can not handle two NICs, speccially one on PCI slots. Looks like some IRQs conflict.

So many buy this setup...Its a good idea to do some investagative work before making a purchase. Find out all you can, this is a good place to ask questions too. Its amazing what you can learn if you ask!

same prob

okay, so im having some problems also...
i have the same board, and went through alot of crap, and now its not working again.
when i try to install XP, it says the hard drive is damaged.
But when i tested the hard drive it said it was working fine.

Could it be my memory?
its the right kind and everything.

i dont know what to do.

Mine Use To Crash With Error And A Blue Screen
2.8 Ghz 512 Pc3200 Updated The Bios Fixed It Do Both Up Dates