Disk read/write error during fresh XP Pro install w/ new MB

[trooper19231]

I've been building PC's for years and never encountered anything like this.

I decided to upgrade one of my PC's, and purchased a new ASUS P4P800 MB with a 3.2E P4 chip. It's a 775 socket, so I bought a new power supply (Vantec) and 1GB or Corsair DDR RAM. After installation, using my old IBM Deskstar 60GB hd and ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500, the BIOS would post, but could only read from the CD-ROM drive. I install XP Pro from the CD-ROM and it loads the setup files to the hd. After the first restart, the PC would again re-initialize XP from the CD. When I changed the BIOS to boot from the hd first, the PC would endlessly restart. I replaced the HD with a WD 160GB model (known good from another PC), and the same thing would happen. Note that both HD and CD-ROM are master devices on their respective IDE channel (Primary and Secondary)

Thinking the MB was bad, I replaced the ASUS with a DFI Lanparty 875P-T. During XP installation, the same thing would happen, only this time I receive the "Disk drive read/write error. Press CTRL ALT DEL tor restart." I disabled the SATA drive, swapped hard drives, and nothing helps. Interestingly, when I restore the BIOS to defaults (with floppy the 1st boot device), I receive a "Floppy Drive fail" message before any hard drive message. The floppy is new, and I know it works.

Do I have a power supply problem, in that the isn't enough voltage going to the HD and Floppy? Why would the CD-ROM work?

Any assistance is appreciated so I don't throw this thing out the window! :(

[glc]

You may have a ram problem. Also make sure that there's no active virus protection in the bios, this will prevent writes to the boot sector. WD drives can't be jumpered to master if they are the only drive on the cable - you have to use cable select or remove the jumper for single operation - and you need XP SP1 or 2 to work with a drive larger than 137gb.

[trooper19231]

Further update.

I swapped the RAM with my other PC (P4 3.0 with 478 Socket) and new RAM works great. But even with older RAM, PC still will not recognize the hd

Attempted to use the WD diagnostic disk, but after setting BIOS to 1st boot of floppy, PC unable to read from floppy. Light is on, but drive does not appear to be accessed.

Swapped out power supplies. No change.

Virus protection is turned off in BIOS.

I called DFI but was told to leave a message. Ho hum.

Thanks for the ideas. Any more?

[glc]

The floppy light stays on all the time, or just when it's trying to read? If all the time, the cable is reversed. You may have a bum IDE cable, that's worth a try swapping.

[Angelus]

Can the ASUS P4P800 MB even run a socket 775 processor?

[trooper19231]

Angelus, you are correct, the P4P800 is Socket 478. I meant the P5P800, which is the 775 version.

Thanks for everyone's responses. I called DFI and they told me to replace the MB due to an apparent problem with the floppy drive controller and the CPU. I replaced both, and bought a new hd in the process (they're cheap enough).

After replacing the MB and CPU, the floppy drive worked correctly, but I still got a "error reading operating system" or something like that. But after replacing the HD, everything loaded and the machine is super.

So any ideas what would prevent two good hard drives (which were both functioning perfectly well just before this upgrade) to suddenly not work? I'm going to install them in another PC and see if I can read/format.

[glc]

You can run diags on the drives - Hitachi DFT and WD DLG Diags.