XP installation woes

[marcaius]

Hey all, I've assembled my new rig: A8N-E mobo, AMD 64 X2 4400, 2x1GB RAM dual kit, and GeForce 7800GT vga... my computer posts , fine, bios recognizes the cd and dvd drives , recognizes my cpu, ram, and the one IDE drive I have hooked up right now which I will put my OS on... (waiting to connect the other which houses my 7000+ song collection and games/program files etc. that I didn't want to risk losing).

Didn't have a boot disk , but I had XP use the afore mentioned IDE drive to boot (wiped it's previous contents) along with the Windows XP cd, great, it boots and goes to install Windows XP and then BAM! it restarts, or sometimes shutsdown outright, I'm pretty sure I have my master/slave jumpers set up right, I have my dvd and cd drives in the "primary IDE" device channel and the HDD as the sole "master" device in the "secondary IDE" device slot. Sometimes it seems the computer randomly refuses to recognize the HDD and I'm thinking/hoping this is my problem, but also I'm fearing (but really have no clue) that it might be my VGA or possibly RAM ... I don't know... HELP!!

thanks in advance,

marcaius

[ktkendall]

Actuall it is more standard to put the harddrive on the primary IDE controller, and those optical drives on the secondary. What type of harddrive is it?? If it's Western Digital then try using it with no jumper at all. Any other brand harddrive, then you should be on the primary ide with and 80 wire ribbon cable and jumpered to 'CS'.

[marcaius]

It's a super old (20GB) Maxtor that was on my first Dell college computer (circa 2000 AD) ... I basically just put my OS on it now, and things like virus scan programs and other "administrative" type applications... and I'm considering just going and getting a 250gb SATA if this problem persists... but for now I just want to get it up and going... First thing I'll do when I get home today will be to switch out the primary and secondary controller strips, but that alone wouldn't cause it to just shut down upon the installation attempt, would it? I have a 535 W psu btw if that's relevant...

Whilst messing around in the "FreeDOS" with a repair install at first, i did run a chkdsk on the drive and it did say there was "an error" that prevented me from doing a repair install, so that's why I wiped it in the first place to do a fresh XP install.

If I were to get a SATA , is it fine to have an IDE hooked up as well as the SATA? No conflicts or detriment to the SATA and/or IDE if I did that?

Please keep the suggestions coming as I'm at work right now and I have a comp ATM but come 5:00 I'll be on my own again trying to bully this thing into working...

ok thanx again

[ktkendall]

Yes you can have an ide harddrive and a sata harddrive on the same system with no problems. How is that current drive cabled and jumpered?? Is the ide cable the older 40 wire or the newer 80 wire and how is the jumper set currently on that HD. The fact that you state that sometimes the HD doesn't even get recognized is why I'm trying to focus on the cable type and the jumper setting, but It could just be a case of that harddrive is going bad since it is pretty old. If that is an older used ide cable I would try a new one of the 80 wire type and set jumper to CS on the primary ide and move opticals to secondary ide.

[marcaius]

It's a new IDE cable that came with my mobo, but honestly i don't know if it's 40 or 80, the mobo came with both but... ... I don't know how to tell the difference... the drive is jumpered for "master" and is on the connector closest to the mobo, I didn't know the jumper settings except for the "Single/Master" which were on the back of the drive, i have found the CS jumper setting on the maxtor website now, so when I get home I'll do that too.

I'm so close I can taste it, and I hope it is something simple ...

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by marcaius It's a new IDE cable that came with my mobo, but honestly i don't know if it's 40 or 80, the mobo came with both but... ... I don't know how to tell the difference...

The 40 wire IDE cable will have a "rougher" surface texture where you can actually tell where the individual wires are and the connectors will all be the same color.

The 80 wire IDE cable will have a "smoother" surface texture because it has thinner wires and the connectors will either be 3 different colors or be marked to identify which connector goes to the motherboard, which is the master connector and which is the slave connector. Drives must be jumpered to CS.

Cricket

[glc]

I would download Powermax and test that drive. If it's giving you errors in chkdsk it may have bad sectors.

[marcaius]

i activated my smartdisk function in my BIOS and determined the 20 GB drive was toast it said "a hardware failure is immenent , back up all data and restart computer" or something like that , SOOOO i went and bought a 200 GB SATA drive, went back threw it in and same thing , the entire machine powers down or restarts right when it gets to the installing of XP to the hard drive. I put my HDD IDE strip in the primary channel and the roms in the 2ndry , the pin settings are all on cable select and I... am boned... or at least I feel that way. I've even tried my roommates XP disk, we are both at a loss as to what's going on...

'scuse me while i weep silently in the corner.

[glc]

What brand and model is your PSU? Is your CD a genuine holographic Microsoft CD?

[ktkendall]

Are you sure it is installing onto the new sata drive?? You have to boot with the xp cdrom and you'll have to press F6 when it asks you to load additional drivers and load the sata drivers via floppy disk so the XP installation program can recognize the new sata drive. Additionally I would completely unhook that old HD so I could get XP loaded on to the new HD without any problems, and just hook it in after all is well to copy any files over then leave it out for good and then I would put each optical drive separetly on it's own ide channel if you're not going to have anymore ide harddrives in there.

Just having a faulty device like a hardrive or cdrom drive, keyboard or mouse or any hardware device that is defective can cause all kind of problems to the whole system such as you are experiencing.

[glc]

You probably won't need the drivers on a floppy - the NForce4 controller should be seen by XP.

[marcaius]

I'm not at home right now but I do know it's a holographic/legit copy of xp, yeseterday I called the xp tech support line and they were helping me but I get such poor cell reception in my apartment that I couldn't keep a call long enough to finish the job . I can't get the psu brand and model at the moment, but I do think/hope at this point that it has to do with setting up the SATA drivers, even though my mobo box says it's SATA ready. So on my way home I'm gonna pick up a floppy drive and disk(s) and cross my fingers and hold my breath and hope this'll do it. If you're thinking I might have a lemon PSU I'll do some research on that, maybe I don't even have enough wattage? I dunno...

thanks for the input all
'til next time

Marcaius

EDIT: does anyone know what NTLDR file not found means? Because I think I have loaded the drivers from the cd that came with my SATA and then when I try to boot from the xp cd, it gives me this message with my only option being to ctrl+alt+del ...

[glc]

That means the CD isn't booting - due to wrong boot order or a bad CD or a bad/misconfigured CD drive.

[marcaius]

Well, it's still doing it, and at this point I am thinking it is my PSU or i'm not adequately cooling my cpu(the latter being most likely) i just got some $20 fan, and even when just running BIOS my cpu temp gets up to 77 F (25 C) ... will the unit shut down if the cpu is overheating? after trying to install windows recently i went to the BIOS as quick as possible and it was about 93 (probably dropped a couple degrees by that time...) ... does that sound like a likely cause? If so I guess the lesson learned is don't skimp on the peripherals hm?

Also, any suggested cooling device for my setup, I would like to OC it but don't have my heart set on it if it will require some water cooled set-up...

Oh and my PSU is an Enermax Model: EG565P-VE

[glc]

Those CPU temperatures are VERY cool. You don't have to worry till they hit 60C.

Test your ram. Here's a ram diagnostic:

www.memtest.org

Install XP with ONLY the one hard drive installed and only ONE rom drive installed.

[marcaius]

Would I just dld a "pre-compiled package for floppy" to use this? Plus, it comes in a folder would I put the whole folder on the floppy or just what's inside the folder? Then when I get it home just boot from that floppy?

[glc]

There's a readme in the zip file that tells you how to make the floppy.

[marcaius]

Yeah, so I'm an idiot and those temps I mentioned above were Celsius...

I saw the 77 and right below it was the 25 , just looking at it, I thought intuitively the top was F and the bottom C , the units just didn't register with me as I scanned it ... turns out the top is processor and the bottom is the mobo , so given that it's regularly been hitting 80 C just messing around in bios and trying different booting configs and all the ineffectual crap I've been doing, if you said don't have to worry til 60 than I think I should be worried ... I'll have to go get a new heatsink tonight...

Edit: Oh yeah, any recommendations for a heatsink??

[ktkendall]

I was going to jump in there above when you gave the temps and say that something isn't right because that would mean your CPU is barely going above room temp when running. So now I have to agree 80 is way too hot.

[glc]

Before you go get a heatsink, try remounting yours correctly. Did it come with a thermal pad - if so, was it covered with plastic? You have to remove the plastic..........and if it had thermal paste and you wiped it off..........

[marcaius]

i don't think it had a thermal pad, it did have paste which i did my best at applying evenly over the entirety of the top surface of the processor , and last night I did take off my sink to remount it , and at the edges , it looked like the paste had been baked, it was mostly dry and had fissures, so i wiped it off and reapplied some that my roommate had (some silver something stuff), after remounting it I may have lost 5 degrees on it's temp but no more.

Is it likely I've damaged my CPU at this point or ... ?

[glc]

No, but you have to clean all that stuff off properly and use new paste. You can't just "wipe it off". The top of the CPU and the bottom of the heatsink must be squeaky clean.

Instructions are at the Arctic Silver website - you don't need their special cleaners but you do need 91% isopropyl alcohol.

[marcaius]

hey all, just thought i'd post the resolution that i arrived at. Apparently it's a pretty widespread and common problem... i.e. one that everyone who tries to install xp onto a sata II drive expierences if they didn't know what to expect.

as it turns out, one of the first things i tried was the answer, i had just dld the wrong driver. but all ya have to do is get the proper sata II driver from your OS manufacturer. i had dld the pci sata driver ... ... better late than never

thanks for all yer help and advice, everytime i do this (build a PC) i learn so much new crap but nothing can replace the value of just getting on the internet and researching the crap outta your problem

now , if you'll please join me in the OC forum ;D