XP Pro Installation Stuck

[krs]

I've gotten a lot farther than I thought I would in my first attempt at building a system. From the XP CD I'm into the Setup screens; so far - so good. It found the 74GB Raptor, asked if I wanted to format it, OK...and it has been disolaying 'Setup is Formatting' over an hour with the progress bar at 0%. The HDD light blinks every 2.8 seconds.


Tyan 2895MB
Dual AMD Opteron 244, each with 2x1GB
74GB WD Raptor (more not connected)
Cheap Radeon PCI-Express card (not for long)
Dell 24" Monitor
Lite-on DVD ROM (Primary)
BenQ DVDR
Mitsui 404A 7-in-1 Floppy (which the BOIS sees but for some reason does not boot even though it is listed first in the boot sequence - will let that go for a while)

I'm tempted to hit the reset button and start over but do not want to screw anything up.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Ken

[Dark Nova]

so you did'nt restart it? ...restart it

[pam123]

Put the DVD first in the boot order.
If that 7-in-1 floppy is hooked up to the usb connector as well as the floppy connector undo the usb connection till after XP is installed and you've installed the motherboard drivers.

[FLG]

I agree with pam here, take off the 7-in-1 thing and try it out.

[krs]

Did a reset, unplugged the USB connector from the floppy, the system re-booted from the CD & started the whole process over. I opted for "quick format" this time and it went through the progress bar fairly quickly. it then copied files to the HD for about 5 min, then rebooted. Nothing happens with the XP CD out of the drive. With the CD in the drive a "hit any key to boot from CD" message appears for 10 seconds, then it tries to boot from the HD, then nothing.

When I do hit 'any key' it takes me back to the full setup screens again.

Tried booting from the floppy, the system does not see it.

I'm in a loop.

Ken

[krs]

The Windows XP splash screen comes up, then a blue screen of death which suggests I run CHKDSK /F on the disk.

Still trying....


Tyan 2895MB
Dual AMD Opteron 244, each with 2x1GB
74GB WD Raptor (more not connected)
Cheap Radeon PCI-Express card (not for long)
Dell 24" Monitor
Lite-on DVD ROM (Primary)
BenQ DVDR
Mitsui 404A 7-in-1 Floppy (which the BOIS sees but for some reason does not boot even though it is listed first in the boot sequence - will let that go for a while)

[pam123]

Your leaving too much out.
The optical drive is first in the boot order when installing XP, which doesn't use a boot floppy, unless there's something unusual about that server board.
Please tell us your steps from there, we don't mind details.

[Panama Red]

Just curious. Is this a legit XP cd or a copy?

[krs]

This is a brand new legal orginal XP Pro SP2 disk from the company that sold me the mobo.

Before the latest reboot I pulled the IDE cable off the floppy drive.....guess what, Windows is installing itself. It should be installed in 39 minutes according to the screen, although that has been the same for the last 5 min. The features screen is changing regularly so I believe the right things are happening.

5 min later....
No such luck.....
Error:
Setup could not register the OLE C:\WINDOWS\system3dssenh.dll because of the following error: Load library returned error 999 (3e7)
***
Error:
Setup had problems registering the following OLE control DLL:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\initpki.dll
Contact our system adminstrator who may provide assistance in diagnosing this problem.
***
Error:
The signature for windows XP Professional Setup is invalid. The error code is 800b0001
Unknown trust provider.
*** Fatal Effor:
Setup failed to instll the produst catalogs. This is a fatal error. The setup log files should contain more information.
***


Thoughts

[krs]

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer
If this is the first time you have seen this stop error screen (it isn't) restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps:
Check for viruses on your computer (This is a brand new drive from Zipzoomfly). Remove any newly installed drives or hard drive controllers (none). Check your hard drive to insure that is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruprion and then restart your computer.
Technical information: *** STOP: 0x0000007b (0xf78a2524,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)

I tried to run CHKDSK /F, it said that the parameter was wrong & suggested /P. Ran that, no problems.

Mystified.

And if I have not said thank you enough, thank you.

Ken

Tyan 2895MB
Dual AMD Opteron 244, each with 2x1GB
74GB WD Raptor (more not connected)
Cheap Radeon PCI-Express card (not for long)
Dell 24" Monitor
Lite-on DVD ROM (Primary)
BenQ DVDR
Mitsui 404A 7-in-1 Floppy (disconnected)

[Panama Red]

What memory are you running? Many XP installs have been corrupted because of memory. Try just one stick if you're running two or try a different brand if you have it available.

[pam123]

Originally Posted by Panama Red What memory are you running? Many XP installs have been corrupted because of memory. Try just one stick if you're running two or try a different brand if you have it available.

Panama Red, he's got a dual processor board running those opterons with 4 GB of memory.
I think he's built himself the MaximumPC 2005 Dream Machine or something close to it.
Am I right about that krs?
If that's so I think you may be running into part of their problem with a 32 bit copy of Windows.
I don't remember them writing up any other problems but I'll have to hunt down my copy, or whoever borrowed it from my shelf without telling me, to see if I missed anything.
If this is what you have done though hop over to here : http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/
and do a search to see who else is is doing/has done it and what probles they had.
Meanwhile I'll try to find that copy and see if there's anything specific we can use to help you.

[krs]

No luck after moving it around.

The brand is SuperTalent..PC3200 1GB DDR 400

Came with the MB

Tried to use WDs Lifeline product. The CD starts to load DR DOS and then goes to a blank screen.

In the Boot sequence list, it has the Raptor as a PCI SCII 7400 instead of a SATA drive.

Still futzing....

[krs]

No, this is from a bunch of ideas I picked up on www.robgalbraithpc.com along with tomshardware. It is intended as a Photoshop machine looking towards VIsta in the summer. I can wind up with 4-5000 photos after a sports wvent and it brings my 4-year old P4 to its knees. This is intended to speed up my workflow and last for the next 3-4 years.

ks

[krs]

The mobo documentation says it supports Win XP.

[pam123]

Originally Posted by krs No, this is from a bunch of ideas I picked up on www.robgalbraithpc.com along with tomshardware. It is intended as a Photoshop machine looking towards VIsta in the summer. I can wind up with 4-5000 photos after a sports wvent and it brings my 4-year old P4 to its knees. This is intended to speed up my workflow and last for the next 3-4 years. ks

It'll certainly speed up things all right.
You and MaximumPC have used the same motherboard and they also used Raptor drives.
I'll read through it now and see how they set up the board's bios, which is where I think you're running into trouble, and see whatelse they have to say about getting everything running.

[krs]

OK, this gets interesting.....For the heck of it I pulled a new WD400GB drive out of the box and installed it on a different SATA port, and disconnected the Raptor.

Guess what....it worked. XP has 19 minutes to go in the installation. So it was either the Raptor or the SATA port. After Installation I will move the 400 back to SATA 0 and see if it works.

If its the Raptor though, I'm really bummed. I bought 2 of them (the 2nd for Photoshop scratch) and the other one just sits and clicks loudly when I plug it in.

So, will Bill Gates have a problem when I do get a working Raptor and re-install the same copy of XP ?

Thanks Again

Ken

[pam123]

Let him have a problem.
You have 30 days till XP goes non-functional which is lots of time to do a reformat.
After reading through the MaximumPC issue what they did was disable SCSI in the bios, which would have made your troubleshooting job shorter but wouldn't have changed the outcome any.
Some motherboards require that an SATA boot drive be on a specific connector, if yours doesn't then your plan to switch drives should tell you what part you need to rma.
MaximumPC's need for XP's 64 bit version was because they were using 8GB of memory, which won't be your problem.

[krs]

The 400 booted cleanly from SATA 0. so now I put the Raptor back on SATA 1 and it is viewable in Explorer. I have WD's diagnostics running on it. It did fail their quick test so now I have it running in extended mode. It probably is going to run all night so I'll pick this back in the AM.

I had disabled the SCSI controller in BIOS earlier in the evening, even though the board does not have one.

Thanks again for the help.

Ken

[krs]

At 3AM Sunday....hello world!

A lot of drivers to load and a couple of RMAs to deal with but it is coming along.

Appreciate all the help

Ken

[pam123]

Originally Posted by krs At 3AM Sunday....hello world! A lot of drivers to load and a couple of RMAs to deal with but it is coming along. Appreciate all the help Ken

The world may have provided a little moral support but you did the job on your own; and it good job it was too.
Nice going