Win2000 Install problems

[audiyoda]

Wow...I've never had so many issues come up with a Windows 2000 installation.

A good friend of mine decided he wanted to build a new system with my help. Nothing big or elaborate:

Athlon 1Gig T-Bird
Asus A7V KT133a chipset
768Meg Kingston SDRAM
Maxtor 30Gig 7200rpm HDD
SB Live! Platinum
Radeon 64Meg DDR (my old card)
Linksys NIC going to Linksys BEFSR41 router hooked to Linksys cable modem

Basically a mirror of my old system. First thing we did after putting the basics together (CPU-Mobo-RAM-Vid card-HDD) was flash the BIOS with the most current update from Asus. At that point, we put the Win2000 Professional CD in the tray and started the install.

During installation, a few files were reported as not installing correctly, each time we had setup re-try, each time the file was installed. Once we got through the initial setup, we let the OS install all the drivers it needed and then we re-booted. After re-boot, we had a few system files not load (swmidi.sys, kmixer.sys, afd.sys) so a log was created and the system shut down. I re-started the system with the Win2000 install disc and chose to repair the installation. After that, things seems fine so we went to the Windows Update page and downloaded all the updates we could find and re-booted after each installation. Stil no real headaches. Then we installed the VIA 4 in 1 drivers -- still no problems. Then we installed the rest of his hardware -- still no problems -- except a PCI Mass Storage Device being reported -- I have no clue what that is.

Then we went to install his software. This is all software that had been running on his old Win98se box. We installed Office 2000, no issues. We installed Mozilla 0.9.9...no problems. We installed Norton Antivirus 2002 (v.8) -- big problems. First, Norton would not initialize at startup -- message came up to re-install. Did that three times going so far as to copy the installation files from the CD and putting them on the HDD -- no go. After the third attempt to re-install I went to uninstall (had done that each time before) and all I got in the Add/Remove Programs window is a grey and white window with some text along the top (under the title bar) that says:

Change or Remove ProgramsAdd ProgramsAdd/Remove Windows Components

It's printed exactly like that. There is nothing else in the window except a close button (says Cl&ose in the button) that does not work.

Also, when I open the control panel, all the icons are on the left hand side of the window (usually where the web-style graphics are that tell you what you are looking at and what each program will do).

This is really strange -- all the Win2000 updates have been installed, the latest BIOS has been flashed. Nothing has been installed that is not intended for Win2000 (NAV disk says Win9x-NT-2000) and we are still occasionally getting a variety of drivers not installing on bootup. What could be the issue?

-Craig

[audiyoda]

Just discovered 2 more 'issues':

Various other windows open like the Contol Panel window with all icons on the left.

I cannot access the Program Files folder of the WinNT folder. The other thing I found interesting is that after first installing Win2000, the WinNT folder was about 585Meg. Now is almost twice that in size. What gives there?

-Craig

[Hpro]

What you actually should do is booting into Repair mode and then restore System files - you can look here hhttp://www.forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31624ow to take care of this.. use this link to look at the procedures..

What you should have done first is - use the Win2k backup utility to backup the entire drive to that new computer - and you would just be fine..

As for this "PCI Mass Storage Device being reported it's the SCSI controller.. or likewise depends what kind of IDE /Raid /SCSI controllers you have on your new motherboard
Hpro

[Xayd]

The A7V mobos have a Promise ATA100 controller, that's what it is.

[audiyoda]

Ahhh...never thought of the Promise Controller.

HPro....did everything as outlined. Still had the same problems. There was really no need to do a backup -- it's a new drive and this was a clean install.

Well, my buddy has given up -- we tried all night to get things up and running -- everything would come to a crashing hault as soon as we installed any antivirus program either of us had -- Norton, Kaspersky, Panda, AVG, or McAfee...all caused these problems. All were 'certified' for Win2000.

So.....he went out and bought himself a copy of WinXP Pro...installation went smoothly, software installs went smoothly, he just hates the interface. Took us a while, but we finally figured out how to change the layout to 'classic'.

Best part of the night was seeing how far we could throw the Win2000 CD....amazing how far a disk of polycarbonate flys

-Craig