first xp install, problems

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raley

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Aug 15, 2003
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I have a new NF7-s with a 2500+... 1 gig of buffalotech pc3200

I power up fine and everything, but then it shows DETECTING IDE DRIVES and takes 30 seconds or so to detect them. If I hit delete to enter the bios, it takes about 15 more seconds to get there. I can just let it go from here, and it will show the RAID screen, then it will show booting from CD-ROM (all these steps take a really long time). My windows CD is in the cd-rom drive - it goes to a black screen and after 10 or so seconds it says SETUP IS GATHERING HARDWARE INFORMATION (or something close to that). The hard drive buzzes around for a while and the screen goes black again. This is as far as I can get.

Any ideas what I am doing/not doing, or advice on how to install windows? Thanks.
 
hmm... could be a hard drive issue. how long have you had it, what kind is it, specs?
 
Does it detect the drives right?

Do you have more then one drive per channel.?
are they set up as master/slave if you do?

Try booting with only one stick of ram. you didnt say how many you had
 
Download and run the manufacturer's diagnostic software appropriate for the hard drive you have. Seagate, Maxtor, etc. all have free and reasonably good diagnostic utilitites. They'll shake down the interface, the drive functionality, etc. My guess is that you have a drive problem of some sort, but believe it or not I'd not rule out memory yet.

I'd start with the drive diagnostics and see what I found.

Good Luck - B.B.S.
 
Sounds like the hard drive so ditto on everyone else. Could be memory or MB but id say HD.

You may wanna double check the jumpers again if this is the first time you're powering up the system
 
It is a WD 120 GB , got it from CC for 40 dollars a few weeks back.

It is on the primary IDE as the master - the CD-ROM is a lite on 52x cdrw on the secondary IDE as master as well.

Also my ram is 2 512mb sticks from Buffalo Tech.

It shouldn't be a cd rom problem should it? Should the cd-rom work just after installing everything?

It does detect the drives correctly and marks them as such. Everything is just really slow and obviously I can't enter windows setup.

I have my old harddrive with win 98 installed - would booting to that and then rebooting with the xp CD in work? I can try a few more things, the only thing is that I never installed a floppy so I was hoping that I wouldnt have to pry one out of an old system to get things started.
 
it couldnt hurt to try the other drive but first try booting with only 1 stick of memory and then the other stick.. also make sure the FSB is set to 133 not 100mhz
 
I had that same issue when I installed XP on my old Compaq a while back.
After spending 3 days working on it I called MS.

After beign on the phone with MS support for almost 35 minutes it was determined to be a loose ram stick (even though I never touched the ram :( )
From what the MS guy told me, XP is a picking bitch when it comes to installs.

Everything has to be set just right, if it is a little off, it wont' run.

Try reseating everything.
 
Of corse(ms) It will pick a fit if your hardware is not working right..I have installed 15-20 computers with XP and very few problems....I've had more problems with 2k then XP...


Just check your hardware...harddrives make sure everything is comming up right in the POST before you start to install...

Get your POST ackting right b4 you install...
 
well everything was posting correctly, just slow and not booting...

Here is the deal now:

I am currently on the new comp. Still problems though. I checked all the connections and master/slave and everything is fine. If I put my old 4.3 GB hard drive as a slave with the 120 GB Western Digital, the comp loads perfectly - fast and everything works correctly. However if I take out the small hard drive I get the same problem.

Should I still try the diagnostic thing? Will that make me format or mess with my data or anything? Any other ideas?
 
RUN WINDOWS REPAIR SEVERAL TIMES UNTIL YOUR REPAIR WORKS... thats the only way sorry cuz same exact thing happens to me i just keep running windows repair until that repair fixes everything
 
Originally posted by Erland
Of corse(ms) It will pick a fit if your hardware is not working right..I have installed 15-20 computers with XP and very few problems....I've had more problems with 2k then XP...


Just check your hardware...harddrives make sure everything is comming up right in the POST before you start to install...

Get your POST ackting right b4 you install...
Click to expand...

Well what I am trying to say is it would install Linux fine and Win98, but not XP.

I had to pull all my memory and reseat it, then it went in with no problem.
 
Originally posted by raley
It is a WD 120 GB , got it from CC for 40 dollars a few weeks back.

It is on the primary IDE as the master - the CD-ROM is a lite on 52x cdrw on the secondary IDE as master as well.
Click to expand...
Western Digital hard drives are picky about the way they like to be jumpered. If the WD hard drive is alone on the IDE chain (e.g. no secondary drive), then you should NOT jumper it as master.

With WD hard drives that are alone on the IDE chain, most of the time you need to either completely remove the jumper, or jumper the drive as 'cable select'. I believe that completely removing the jumper is preferred - check the lable on the drive to be sure...but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the drive label indicates a special or empty jumper setting if the drive is alone on the IDE bus.

Hope that helps.
 
Originally posted by pfc_m_drake
Western Digital hard drives are picky about the way they like to be jumpered. If the WD hard drive is alone on the IDE chain (e.g. no secondary drive), then you should NOT jumper it as master.

With WD hard drives that are alone on the IDE chain, most of the time you need to either completely remove the jumper, or jumper the drive as 'cable select'. I believe that completely removing the jumper is preferred - check the lable on the drive to be sure...but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the drive label indicates a special or empty jumper setting if the drive is alone on the IDE bus.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

Bingo! It took me 2 days to figure this one out. Take the jumper out completely. I was stumped as to why the PC I built for my cousin POSTed so slowly.
 
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