Windows install issue

[JohnDavis]

So i have a 4 year old box that recently had a hard drive death. Got a new 300 gig HD, and noticed the first odd thing in the BIOS, it only recognized 137.xx GBs. Didnt seem to be a problem on my brothers computer (has the same HD, bios only recognized 137, but was able to format all 300 gb) This may or may not be related to my primary problem:

I put in and boot from my windows CD and get the "setup is inspecting your hardware configuration." After that point it ussually goes into the blue screen where it lists all the drivers it is loading to prepare to install. But mine just freezes, so I cant install an OS .

What I have tried so far:

2 different CD drives, both have the same problem
removed all non-critical cards and drives
My windows CD will get to the blue screen (ie past the freeze point) on my brother's box

So i hooked up my harddrive to his box to check if it was my HDD that was the problem, but it worked fine! so i Installed the OS via his machine, and thought i had solved the issue.

When I put the HDD back into my machine and booted... i got this: "A disk read error occured. Press ctrl-alt-delete"


I am stumped. could my mobo be going bad? (Ps it is a k7s5a that is about 5 years old)
Any other tips to get this working again?

dave

[ktkendall]

What you have is a bios limitation on your PC, thats why it only reads part of the hard drive and probably your PC will not run XP, be we would need to know the processor type and speed and how much ram is in your PC to answer that. Loading windows on another PC doesn't work either becase windows is all set up for the PC your loaded it on, and now trying to swap that loaded drive into your PC fails because windows is now really confused looking for all the hardware that was on the PC you used to laod it with but it isn't there cause you are now trying to boot that drive on your PC. Give processor and ram specs please..

[JohnDavis]

Ok. I have an athalon (XP i believe) 1ghz with 512 megs of ram in 1 ddr.

Update. I have run the western digital diagnostics off of my copy of Ultimate Boot CD, and it came up with the error "Panic: MCB Chain corrupted". Does this change anything?

Regardless of everything, even when I have NO HDDs connected, my windows CD still freezes after the "inspecting hardware config." message.

[JohnDavis]

Oh and just FYI my machine has been running XP, just installed on a smaller drive so i KNOW it is capable.

[ktkendall]

Your right, the machine is good for XP, but I think you have found your problem, defective ram..

[JohnDavis]

So "panic MCB chain" implies bad ram?

[JohnDavis]

I just tried some borrowed ram, and still get the same problem. Could this be a faulty mobo component?

[ktkendall]

Yes I would have to say you are correct in that the motherboard itself has become defective.

[glc]

No, "panic MCB chain" is an issue with the UBCD, your burn may be corrupted. However, it *is* possible it's a hardware issue causing it, very possibly defective ram.

Best thing to do is download the floppy disk versions of the WD diagnostics and memtest86+ and try to run them.

The K7S5A is from a time where 48 bit LBA addressing was just coming into play. I do not know if yours is compliant or not - you may want to get the latest bios off the ECS site and flash it. It's worth a try.