ASUS A8N-SLI Premium nVidia Windows Setup problems

[theiod]

This is my configuration:
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
AMD Athlon 64 3700+
2xCorsair Twin 1GB sticks
NEC ND-3540A DVD/RW
Maxtor 300GB SATA 300
Maxtor 200GB SATA 300
Mitsumi 7in 1 & Floppy Drive
XFX Geforce 6600GT PCI-Express 128mb

I've tried to install windows xp pro sp2 32bit a number of times. I got the latest version of the nvidia chipset drivers for the SATA drives. I pressed f6 during the install and it seemed to function after a whole lot of tweeking to the BIOS. Finally when I got it through the install I'm seeing issues.

After the ASUS screen closes the screen goes black for about 2 minutes. After it stays black for 2 minutes the black windows load screen pop up. This screen will stay for a long time. Eventually the system will reboot itself and repeat this process over and over until a few hours later it will log into windows.

I don't doubt I've probably messed something up earlier on. Any help or clues as to what I'm doing wrong would be appreciated. I'm using the nvidia nforce SATA connectors not the silicon image. I don't want to setup a raid system. I disabled all the RAID and Silicon Image settings in the BIOS. I did enable the S.M.A.R.T. settings in the BIOS too as I read from many other posts.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Cobragt88]

maxtor and nforce 4 don't mix thats your problem

u need to find out what firmware is on your hhd and flash it to relsove this problem

 

[bazza]

set the jumper at the back to the 2 lhs pins, worked for me for my 2x6V300F0

before setting this jumper, as soon as I went into disk administrator in WinXP, it just froze

btw, both my maxtors have the same F/W but only 1 of them had problems

I set the jumper on both to be safe, been running a few months error free

Maxtor told me a later F/W will dix this, but I'm content on running at 150

 

[theiod]

The firmware did it. Wow I've never had to update the firmware of a harddrive before. I guess there is a first for everything.

Thanks alot I really appreciate your help.