Installation Problems using Gigabyte GA-7VA

[rowanparker]

Hi everyone.

I recently installed a GA-7VA motherboard with the following components:
Athlon 2200+
2 x 256MB Kingston PC2700DDR
Seagate 80GB HDD
Samsung DVD Drive

When I tried to install Windows XP during the intial file copy stage (after formatting the partition). I would get "error copying file" messages. Choosing to ignore the messages would result in a failed installation later on (the GUI stage). Everytime I tried it different files would cause the errors. I swapped around all the my different hardware to no avail, all the devices worked, but the problem still existed. Taking the advice from a friend, I reduced the FSB to 100Mhz (reading as Athlon 1500) and everything worked perfectly.

However now that Windows is installed I get similar problems. When trying to install certain program (mainly games but also Visual Studio and Paintshop Pro) I get CRC errors, thus the install fails. I know the source media is working because they run fine on my other computers. Even if I copy the files to my hard drive then run the install from their I still get the problem. As you would guess this is really starting to annoy me. Would anyone have any ideas on what I could try to fix the problem, I've already done the following:

Installed Service Pack 1a
Installed the Cryptography service critical update (Rise of Nations though this service may have been corrupt)
Set drives to various transfer modes including PIO
Removed HDD Smart mode
Removed HDD Write Caching
Tried different CAS latencies
Tried different cable type settings
Different VIA 4in1 drivers
Different RAM/FSB clock speeds

Finally, everything else works perfectly. I can copy/burn CD's, transfer files across my network. It's just installation that doesn't work.

P.S. The errors also occured while trying to install Red Hat 8 and Windows 2000 Professional.

Thanks in advance, Rowan Parker

 

[endyen]

Please check that the heat sink is properly installed. If it is not flat, and tight to the chip, you will get the same problem. Did you use a good thermal interface? Is the heat sink right way round?

 

[rowanparker]

I'm fairly certain that the heatsink is properly installed. But surely if it wasn't then the computer would not boot or the chip would be fried. Other CPU intensive tasks such as playing games work without problems.

 

[endyen]

Check in the bios for the normal idle temp of your cpu, then play a fps game for ten minutes and check the temp again in bios. If the difference is more than 7 c degrees, its a hsf problem.

 

[rowanparker]

It jumped from 36C idle to 39C. Is that significant enough?
I ran a CPU burn in test in SiSoft Sandra and got practically the same result, although it did peak to 40C once.