Tom's Hardware > Forum > Windows XP > Windows XP General Discussion > Interesting XP problems
Ask the community Add a reply
Word :    Username :           
 
Orin_x   09-15-2009 at 10:14:35 AM

So, I've got an interesting tale to tell. here's the hardware: ga-k8n-sli, athlon x64 socket 939 processor, 3GB memory, WD1600 hard drive, hooked up with SATA. System's a decent plugger, up until a bit over a week ago. System freezes up, I reboot, and it repeats a few times before finally crashing and rebooting before completely loading windows. this is happening in normal as well as safe mode.

So I figure the hard drive's hosed, time to grab a new one. I go through 3 different hard drives just trying to install XP (SP2 and SP3, OEM installers from a known manufacturer -- not my system's builder). All of them, and I do mean all of them fail during the file copy process after the drive format. Dlls just fail to copy over. I try virgin install media and I swap the IDE DVD drive for a SATA, no joy. I even tried to do a repair on the hard drive from the xp install CD. Half the time it reboots when I try to log into the partition, and I've even gotten to run a chkdsk once, where a generic chkdsk says there's no problems, then the chkdsk /r errors out about 3/4ths of the way through.

So, I figure if the hard drive's are failing (known good ones, mind you -- even a brand new one, fresh out of box), and it doesn't matter what DVD ROM I use, it's gotta be the board. If nothing else, it's the SATA controllers. So, I blow some dough and get a cheaparse MSI MS-7184 micro ATX, Slap in the Athlon x64 processor, add the memory, video card, etc. Put in the drives and bam... same problem. Windows refuses to load on the new harddrive, with a failure to copy DLLs about 90% of the way through.

So that's where I sit. So far I've not replaced the case, power supply, processor or video card.

Anyone have any ideas?

Add a reply
Sponsored Links
Register or log in to remove.
Bronze Win XP badge aford10   09-15-2009 at 01:42:50 PM

Did you change the IDE controller in the BIOS?

------------------------------ CM HAF 932 - 300GB Velociraptor
GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-DS3R
E8500 - Sapphire 1Gb 4850
4G DDR3 OCZ Reaper 1333
 Reply to aford10
saint19   09-15-2009 at 04:32:43 PM

Reset the CMOS and try. Also, you verify that the RAM is good?

------------------------------ If you like my answer, select me as the best answer.
------------------
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.". Albert Einstein.
------------------
 Reply to saint19
Orin_x   09-15-2009 at 05:29:16 PM

I hadn't made any changes in the BIOS regarding the IDE controller on the original board, no. When using IDE on both I was using the controller that's part of the board. Additionally, if I switched motherboards and ended up with the same result, wouldn't that negate the need to reset the CMOS?

I'll pull out sticks of RAM and run each individually and see if I can recreate the problem.

Reply to Orin_x
Bronze Win XP badge aford10   09-15-2009 at 05:59:51 PM

If you are using a SATA drive, you may need to change the controller. What is it currently set to?

------------------------------ CM HAF 932 - 300GB Velociraptor
GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-DS3R
E8500 - Sapphire 1Gb 4850
4G DDR3 OCZ Reaper 1333
 Reply to aford10
Orin_x   09-15-2009 at 06:11:40 PM

Well right now I've got only 2 SATA ports on the MSI motherboard, and so the DVD-ROM is on IDE0, my new harddrive is on SATA 1 and the original hard drive is on SATA 2. Was there more I need to look for in the settings?

Also, I have changed motherboards, originally thinking this was a SATA controller problem. So far the problems are still the same.

Reply to Orin_x
Bronze Win XP badge aford10   09-15-2009 at 06:23:24 PM

You're talking about SATA ports on the mobo. I was referring to the IDE/SATA controller in the BIOS. If your mobo's default is for IDE hard drives, it needs to be changed to support a SATA drive.

------------------------------ CM HAF 932 - 300GB Velociraptor
GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-DS3R
E8500 - Sapphire 1Gb 4850
4G DDR3 OCZ Reaper 1333
 Reply to aford10
Orin_x   09-16-2009 at 07:19:20 AM

So I'm not seeing anything that explicitly focuses on IDE over SATA in the BIOS, but to play it safe, I have set the SATA drive as primary boot. I did receive an IRQL LESS THAN OR GREATER bluescreen when the windows install was scanning available drives to install on. So I'm going to strip it down further, rip out the oldest RAM in the bunch (2 .5GB sticks, leaving 2GB.) and run with the onboard VGA port and see what I get.

Reply to Orin_x
Bronze Win XP badge aford10   09-16-2009 at 01:31:38 PM

All BIOSs are a little different, but it should look something like one of these.
http://common.packardbell.com/item [...] atures.gif
http://img.neoseeker.com/v_image.p [...] 6&image=14

------------------------------ CM HAF 932 - 300GB Velociraptor
GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-DS3R
E8500 - Sapphire 1Gb 4850
4G DDR3 OCZ Reaper 1333
 Reply to aford10
Orin_x   09-16-2009 at 06:33:12 PM

Ok, so after a bit of screaming and further elimination I found the problem that caused it all.

One Bad Stick of RAM.

After rearranging the sticks on the board I received a lot of beeping that the manuals determined was a memory error. Isolated the stick and threw it out and so far no problems. If I didn't know any better I'd say that it was the last stick of RAM in the set, and so it didn't error out until the system needed to fill up the bad address space on it. *shrug*

Now to recover the data off the old primary drive.

Thanks for giving me ideas to test out. Really needed a 2nd set of eyes on this one.

Reply to Orin_x
Bronze Win XP badge aford10   09-16-2009 at 07:34:04 PM

Looks like Saint19 pegged that one. Good call Saint.

------------------------------ CM HAF 932 - 300GB Velociraptor
GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-DS3R
E8500 - Sapphire 1Gb 4850
4G DDR3 OCZ Reaper 1333
 Reply to aford10
Ask the community Add a reply
Tom's Hardware > Forum > Windows XP > Windows XP General Discussion > Interesting XP problems
Go to:

There are 596 identified and unidentified users. To see the list of identified users, Click here.

Forum map
Bestofmedia Forum ©
2000-2009 Bestofmedia Group
Page generated in 1.388 seconds
Sponsored links
  • Ask the community now
  • Publish
Ad
Related Topics
See all relatives topics
They won a badge
Join us in greeting them
  • 12:11 mi1ez won the Watchman badge
  • 01:00 sighQ2 won the Freshman badge
  • 09:06 ulysses35 won the CPUs badge
  • 01:00 fleeb won the Freshman badge
  • 01:00 jaymoney61 won the Freshman badge
  • 07:06 amdfangirl won the Watchman badge
  • 01:00 benw won the Freshman badge
  • 01:00 anmjoven won the Freshman badge
  • 01:00 dpnaugle won the Freshman badge
  • 01:00 ayeohx won the Freshman badge