What in gods name is wrong with my PC?, Cant install windows
 

Ive tried and tried, this is now my 3rd day of trying to install windows xp on my computer. I recently got a new motherboard/chip/ddr ram, and as soon as i got it running i went and tried to install windows xp on my hard drive, so i could get a fresh start with a new computer/os.

I started up my pc, with the xp cd in and booted from it. However. XP just wont install on my computer! At first, it loads the startup files from cd very quickly, and gets started. Once it started checking the disk the problems start. First, it hangs at 0% for like 10 minutes, then it hangs at 100% for 10 minutes (no numbers in between, probably because the drive was just formatted), then after the status bar goes away it hangs for another 10 minutes with the text "checking drive c:" (but the statusbar has hit 100 and gone away). Then finally, it starts to copy the files from cd. It gest to 6% or so very quickly, but then it slows and reads a few files, stops for 5 mins, reads another few files, stops again. After 2 hours, it finishes copying the files. Then on the first restart, the windows xp logo shows up, with the statusbar. It hangs there for 30 minutes, then finally i get a grey screen, with nothing on. Then it waits there for 30 more minutes, and finally i get a blue screen with "Stop: Unkown hard error".

This is the THIRD day im trying to install xp. Ive tried on three different drives, and 3 different xp cds (2 are ap1 - they freeze when trying to install driver.cab, and tell meit cant read the file from cd - even though theyre two different sp1's downloaded from different sources). The regular xp does what i explained above. I tried it on a FAT32 drive, as well as 2 NTFS drives. ive even formatted/scandisked the drives for errors including a deep scan where it checks all the sectors.

Ive foundthat the installation is burning holes in my hard drives, as when it screws up and i format the drive, there are several more bad sectors then the time before.

I have no idea whats wrong.. I installed windows 98 flawlessly (within 8 minutes) and even when i tried running xp setup from windows 98, it does the same thing when copying the files over (except with a better gui).

This is driving me nuts - ive got extremely important data on 2 of the 3 drives and i cant afford to lose them. Ive got a dummy drive that i use to try and install xp on - even though ive also tried on the other 2 drives.

What in gods name could be wrong?
I have a new AMD XP 2800+ barton chip, an ASUS AGA777 or something (deluxe model, pretty new) mb, 512 mb ddr, 16x10x40 cdrw.


Heres one morebit of info that could help:
Before i installed my mb/chip, i had the msblast worm which i tried to remove under xp. it asked me to restart, but i clicked restart later. When i finally shutdown after getting ready to format/install xp again, instead of restarting i shutdown, installed the mb/chip, and restarted. when i got to windows, my mouse and keyboard did not work. after that hell began. my mouse and keyboard are fine however, since they worked on the 98 install.


pr0/darren/anyone else trying to contact me - im trying my hardest to get back up and running. this is the 3rd day - THIRD DAY for trying to install fucking windows xp, and my computer has rarely been off, always trying another way to load it up.

fuck what a pain in the ass

just go buy a $500-$1000 kick-ass dell, make sure its patched, hook up your 3 data drives as slaves and slurp down the critical data.

then burn everything else.
:2 cents:

Couple things....
-make sure your drive is formatted, including the MBR
-make sure it is partitioned
-try installing with as little peripherals as possible plugged in (sound card, nic, etc.) Once windows is installed, add things one by one.

This may seem odd, but I had a similar problem a few years ago installing W2K.
Make sure you have the right cable for the drive you are installing on. I had a cable with the black connectors, and W2K would not install. I used the cable with the blue connectors, and voila. Problem solved.

If none of that works, zero write the hd, and then format it.

"Ive foundthat the installation is burning holes in my hard drives, as when it screws up and i format the drive, there are several more bad sectors then the time before."

Ah, maybe a bad drive?

format c: :Graucho

Did you try that new hardware with a hard drive that already had an OS installed? That can be due to memory issues. I've heard a few stories where XP won't install in a system with unstable memory. You can try to decrease the ram speed, e.g. if it's at DDR400 bring it down to DDR333, or just try to ease off on the ram timmings, if you have it at CAS2-2-2-6 change it to CAS2.5-3-3-7 That could help.

i installed xp with my sisters box on one of my hard drives, i thought i had won the battle, but when i took it out and put it in my box, i got a blue screen with some drive mount volume error.

oh my fucking god

what the fuck is wrong?

i have 2 ide connectors (promise raid support) and 2 ide connectors (ultradma/133 support)

currently the cable is in the one of the ultradma connectors.

Maybe its a sign you should install something other than windows?

http://www.apple.com/switch :1orglaugh

oh for fuck sakes

i should have specified in my original message:
please people with any intelligence in at all need reply, not kids looking to postcount++

whats the size of your formatted partition?

the 3 drives ive tried:

3
20
40

all 3 of em take SO fucking long just to delete a god damn file off the hard drive. it takes the setup like 10 mins just to examine the drive to see if its there - takes 0.1 seconds on my sisters 800mhz computer, ive got a 2800+ xp

when it makes the directories for windows, it creates a folder, waits 10 seconds then creates the next

WHAT THE FUCK!

this is so fucking infuriating. THREE days ive sat here trying to install xp, waiting for it to do thesimplest things.

its taken me 3 hours just to get the files copied over (if it even gets that far - doesnt matter ill get the grey screen followed by a blue screen if it succeeds anyway) and when i installed xp on my sisters computer it took 20 mins to get thru the copy part.

windows 98 installed in 8 minutes - what the hell!?

ummn. XP confuses your IDE controller or something? or having a hard time with one of your devices, thing is windows 98 ignores all of that, just installs itself all the time

try to get the device driver of your IDE controller from the manufacturer and then when you start XP setup when it asks you if you want to specify any 3rd party drivers, insert the floppy disk with the .inf file on it.

used to have that problem with windows 2K . except that it wouldnt install (wouldnt detect the hard disk) had to get the promise IDE drivers and specify it at the start of the install.

but for three drives?
THREE?

on 2 of the 3 ive had xp installed on it earlier already

its just after i installed the new mb/chip/ddr its going shitzo on me

thats what im saying dude, its a new motherboard, a new IDE controller, maybe it has problem interfacing it.

why don't you calm your bitch ass down sally. you're acting like a little girl!

i wish i could help, but i work for microsoft

I had this exact problem.

Slowed the RAM, works fine.

I could have returned it, but I was like F that its fast enough for now, and I want to install. :)

My previous systems RAID crapped out, and I decided it was time to upgrade.

couldnt find any drivers for my hard drive - all of em were little dos programs that installed the driver - no inf files

i think it needs reformatting...:thumbsup

I had problems last time I reinstalled windows, I had to uses 3 copies of the damn thing, each were scratched to hell.

argh!

well i installed 98 on my fat32 hard drive again, tried copying and pasting hundreds of large files in the os, and i was able to copy everything to another folder flawlessly and fast. the drive doesnt appear to be the problem?

then i copied over my entire xp cd to my hard drive, and started setup.exe. It did the work involved from 64 min remaining to 54 min remaining in one minute. Looks good so far. Then it restarts to actually install it. and it does THE SAME FUCKING THING AGAIN! All the files are already on my hd (since i copied em over from the cd). But now once its restarted xp decides to use its own satan drivers or something on my hard drive, and now i can hear my hd working (for 1/10th of a second) every 10-15 seconds. The progress bar id expect will reach 100 in 3 hours. when its done, i bet ill get another blue screen.

what the fuck?! anyone with any idea at all what im doing wrong here? it says "press f6 to install a 3rd party scsi or raid driver" - i dont think my drive is either of those 2, and i cant find any drivers anyway.

well i installed 98 on my fat32 hard drive again, tried copying and pasting hundreds of large files in the os, and i was able to copy everything to another folder flawlessly and fast. the drive doesnt appear to be the problem?

then i copied over my entire xp cd to my hard drive, and started setup.exe. It did the work involved from 64 min remaining to 54 min remaining in one minute. Looks good so far. Then it restarts to actually install it. and it does THE SAME FUCKING THING AGAIN! All the files are already on my hd (since i copied em over from the cd). But now once its restarted xp decides to use its own satan drivers or something on my hard drive, and now i can hear my hd working (for 1/10th of a second) every 10-15 seconds. The progress bar id expect will reach 100 in 3 hours. when its done, i bet ill get another blue screen.

what the fuck?! anyone with any idea at all what im doing wrong here? it says "press f6 to install a 3rd party scsi or raid driver" - i dont think my drive is either of those 2, and i cant find any drivers anyway.


and - now as i check its progress - it says that "xp couldnt create a backup image", "xp could not find the files on the cd, please copy files from cd to hd and restart setup". THE FILES ARE ON THE HARD DRIVE ALREADY - im running setup from my harddrive

does it think my drive is a cdrom or something? wtf

*bump*

I have had similiar problems helping other people install XP as well as installing it locally.

Solution: Install Windows 2000, manually install the network driver or modem and download all the updates. All your devices should work if you keep Windows 2000. I would recommend this.

Use XP from here at your own risk!

if I were you, I'd take that machine to the first computer store and let them hook up XP for you. 3 days lost and who's paying for that time? I bet people with experience would fix things faster since they have all the other RAMs and cables and stuff they can try on your machine so they can figure out which part is causing problems.

I used to do all this shit myself too and would be ashamed to take my machine to the store, lol, but today I don't care anymore. I want it to work and fast and since I fallen behind a bit with this I rather pay a few bucks for geeks to do it for me than I busting my balls like that. Time = money.

Stop..
Listen..
XP sometimes has a problem with 3rd party raid controllers..needs the drivers during install..and it's a pia..so I need to know first..is the hard drive you are installing from or 2 on the raid controller?
If so, do not install on it orthem..move stuff around or better yet take them all out except the one you want win xp on and make the primary hard drive attached to the mb..slot 1..ok?
surf and get a copy of wipe.com, a hard drive wiping utility that will totally wipe out the hard drive you want to install to, including mbr. install it to a blank floppy
boot with a dos boot disc, put the wipe disc in and type wipe c:\, andswer yes when it asks are you sure..this will take a few so go get a cup of coffee
formatting is no good anymore..you need to wipe the damned thing cause of all the install tries, etc
after the disc is wiped out, format it with a win 98 boot disc into fat 32
start up the pc with the winxp bootable disc or go to microsoft and download the winxp startup disc set and, unless it's a bootleg version that is hosed, it should install fine.
get the raid drivers, install them then the raid controller if it's not already on the mb and then all your hard drives will pop up
any questions, my icq is 15741038

i cant put all my programs and source codes in the hands of some asshole at futureshop or anything. they dont give a rats ass if you lose data on your disk. if their job is installing xp, they will do that and not care about anything else. also, i dont have a car and bringing in my pc wont be joyous on the bus

fuck.... you write too much....

Check the motherboard manufacturer's website. It sounds like this might be an IDE interface driver issue - upgrade to the latest BIOS revision and also check for any XP driver updates on the same site.

but win98 installs fine

michaelw, did you try to lower the ram speed in the bios? Some months ago on asusboards, there were many people complaining about not being able to install XP on a new sis648 board, the asus P4S8X. It worked fine with win98. That was a buggy motherboard, with an unstable memory controller (from a bad chipset batch). I also bought one :BangBang: although I did have some problems, I was able to install XP fine. First and Last asus product I bought :mad:

I advise you to go http://abxzone.com/ forum (formerly asusboards.com) They chat mostly about asus products there. Friendly bunch, I'm sure you'll get help, and I bet many more people are having troubles with the same motherboard you have.

Good luck.

i think ive got it

seems to have been a problem with aiop and oip mode or something