SATA troubles in hell

[vireo]

sl-k8tpro-939 (http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/Products/soltek_slk8tpro_939/) is my mobo and I'm pretty clueless about how to get my new sata150 WD Caviar (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822135106) installed as a primary drive. I have the drive plugged into the onboard promise controller and its recognized by it and it shows up in the boot menu. But when i boot from the windows install cd, its not even found. I even tried pressing F6 to install third party drivers and used my sata floppy, but to no prevail.

I have the latest bios installed because i remember updating for the cool n quiet inclusion in the bios. There are two sata controllers i think, via and promise. Not sure how to install drivers for each, since the readme's in the driver zips are written in techy, and I never learned techy.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[DynamicTech]

How many drives are you trying to install?

[glc]

http://81.169.156.245/soltek.de/soltek/download_file/Driver/others/raid/PDC20579.zip

Unzip this into an empty folder. Then go to the PDC20579 folder, open that. Then open the 579S-ATA 1.00.0.25 folder. Copy everything in that folder to a floppy - both the files and folders. This is now your F6 driver disk.

[vireo]

I'm trying to install windows on my sata drive, which is not being recognized by the windows boot cd. it prompts me to provide the driver which i do, then it says it cannot recognize the mass storage device.

My mobo download site can be found here (http://www.soltek.de/soltek/download/download_all.php?CPU_st=Socket+939&chipset_st=VIA&isbn_st=SL-K8TPro-939).

I put the "579S-ATA 1.00.0.25" folder on a floppy and pointed to it when prompted in the windows installation. no dice, just more agony.

[vireo]

Oddly, a few changes in the configuration set things right. I think when i was swapping out drives to bring back windows, the configs reverted, and left it ill prepared for me to return to windows setup with the driver in hand.

Thanks for looking into it glc.

[glc]

Just to clarify, I said to put the contents of that folder on the floppy - not the folder. Reason for this is the txtsetup.oem file must be in the root of the floppy. Forgive me if you did in fact do it this way.

[vireo]

That's actually what i did, I put the contents of the folder on the disk, not the folder, but before I made it back here to edit my post to be more accurately, I fixed the problem. Or at least I thought I did.
I'm now getting errors I've never seen before and at a an alarm frequency. I know it has to do with the harddrive, but I don't know if I should blame the previously unused sata interface or the brand new harddrive. I need to isolate the problem before taking any consumer actions. For the time being, I'm going to attempt to use the via's interface for the sata.

[vireo]

Wow. I can't boot from the sata drive anymore.. so I reach into my bag and pull out my old harddrive and an ide cable. It still has a windows install so I figure I can work off of it for the time being. I connect the drive straight from the ESD bag its in, thinking that ill have to take it out before it overheats. Except the boot doesn't even work with my old stable drive! I know have a mobo in bad need of life support.
When booting from the sata drive, It constantly reboots itself before making it to windows. Itll flash a blue screen with text that I'd love to read, but I can only make out one line that says "IRQ_LESS_OR_EQUAL". Thats only one flavor the blue screen comes in; i noticed a few others but with no discerning lines. The ATA drive does a similar boot-reboot cycle. Any hope?

[Cricket]

Post the complete system specs of your computer including the power supply. List the parts by brand and model.

Did you test your RAM with a software tester like Memtest86+ yet?

:) Cricket

[vireo]

Ill try the memtest next. The specs are listed below. I did get a good look at a blue screen, it said that a problem was caused by a file named "setupdd.sys" and displayed PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA. at the bottom it gave some technical stuff then said "first block memory detect". This is just one of blue screens.

From what I know, my specs are:
amd 64 3000 with the 90nm
2gb of corsair value select, 4 sticks of ddr400
SL-k8tpro-939
nvidia 5600 ultra (made by a generic brand, can't find the name of it anywhere)
thermaltake 480w silent pure power
memorex cd drive
nec dvd drive
nec floppy
HDD: two ide drives, a seagate and WD, and a brand new sata, the WD caviar. I've tried running the system install on all of them.

Im gonna try to make a list of all the behavior I've come across.

[glc]

That's almost definitely bad ram.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315335