I've had troubles with VIA chipset boards. We have some Duron computers at work and the motherboards use VIA chipsets. I've found there are bugs that can affect CDROM drives (randomly fails to read) and sound cards (can play but cannot record).

The CDROM bug was solved by using drives that are not made by creative (LG's work well). I've not found a solution to the sound problem.

These problems exists regardless of what OS you run.

Neil Watson
watson-wilson.ca