Help! Windows XP booting up problem!

[ritesh_laud]

Some of you may remember the thread a couple weeks ago about my friend’s Athlon XP 1600+ system where he tried to use water cooling and somehow he fried the CPU (although there was no visible damage). Well, he RMA’d the CPU back to Newegg and just got his new one yesterday! So I went to his place to help him put the new machine together.

Well, we successfully built the machine. The motherboard is an Abit KR7A-RAID. He’s using a monster Alpha heatsink, Antec 400W PSU, and two case fans (one’s a 120mm). It boots up fine, temps in the BIOS at idle are about 41°C. The first thing we did was flash the mobo BIOS to the latest version 6N, but we used the unofficial one from www.viahardware.com that includes the latest Highpoint RAID controller BIOS as well (v2.3). Everything’s peachy so far.

He has a single hard drive on the ATA-133 RAID controller. Because of this, we had to install the Highpoint drivers (v2.3) for Windows XP while in the text mode of Setup. We did this and then allowed Windows to make a single NTFS partition on the hard drive and install itself.

It copied all the files in about 15 minutes and then rebooted. Now’s the problem. Windows XP won’t load! The screen goes blank for about five minutes while the hard drive light stays on, then eventually we get a message saying that such and such file in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 is corrupt! We re-installed Win XP three times and each time it does the same thing (not always the same file that’s corrupt). It’s basically either having a problem reading from the hard drive or it wrote garbage to the hard drive during the installation.

On the second re-install, we tried older Highpoint drivers (v2.0.1019). No dice. On the third re-install, we loaded the Fail Safe Defaults in the BIOS and the only thing we changed was the boot order so that it would boot off the ATA-133. No dice.

Any ideas? Much appreciated!!

 

[Guest]

A stab in the dark but may jolt something in someones mind - I've never used raid before but....

Could it be the ide controllers not functionning properly??

If I'm wrong then let me know.

Did you try and install using the standard bios instead of flashing it.

Why NTFS and not FAT32. does XP require NTFS.

<font color=purple><b>Techie2001</font color=purple></b>
<i>(Crazy Alien)</i>
If it ain't broke, Don't fix it.

 

[tlaughrey]

Did you try installing it with the hard drive on the regular IDE1 channel instead of the RAID controller? If you don't get any problems that way, then perhaps there's some problem with the RAID controller.

<i>I made you look. But I can't make you see.</i>

 

[tlaughrey]

Why NTFS and not FAT32. does XP require NTFS.

Windows XP can use either FAT32 or NTFS. NTFS is just a little more robust. I don't think it would matter in this case.

<i>I made you look. But I can't make you see.</i>

 

[FUGGER]

Pay attention son, this is undocumented info.

Delete current stripe to start off.

Ok, several things you need to be aware of

Put 1 drive on each controller. make sure it at the end of the drive cable, both cables are "UN-NOTCHED" meaning there is no wires in the ribbon with wire cut out close to the motherboard connector.

Set both drives to CS "cable select"

now stripe the drives.

Maxtor D740X and D540X fluid barring drives are incompatable with ATA RAID.
you can tell the fluid barrings by the part number, it will end in L1, L2, L3, and L4. The non fluid end in J1, J2, J3, and J4

Dont overclock if your running RAID, high chance of screwing it up doing so.

 

[Matisaro]

Maxtor D740X and D540X fluid barring drives are incompatable with ATA RAID.
you can tell the fluid barrings by the part number, it will end in L1, L2, L3, and L4. The non fluid end in J1, J2, J3, and J4

Hey fugg, you got any links as to why that is? Seems like a really weird issue when all fluid bearings are supposed to replace is conventional ball bearings on the rotating platters, and dont really affect the performance of the drive. At least they are not supposed to.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!

 

[paleblueeyes]

I just had a similar problem putting xp on my box (1600+/iwill xp333) it finally worked when i booted up with a win95 boot disk, made 1 partition for c drive (2gb/fat16) and installed just the os on that drive, i got errors when i tried it fat32 and it wouldn't let me format in ntsf

...so i got that goin' for me

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

I've had similar problem while tryignt o install NT Kernel based OS's while on a secondary IDE Controller (one other than the Chipset based IDE Controller.....something NOT from Promise, Highpoint, etc.)
Try sticking the drive on the IDE Port for the Southbridge of the chipset.....Also.....it seems as if you have your HighPoint Raid Controller set in RAID Mode....you know theres a jumper to switch it between a RAID controller and a regualr ATA-100/133 Controller......anyways, theres no sense in usign the HighPoint controller anyways unless you actually going to be using a Raid setup, therefore again I would advice you to attach the IDE Cables to the Chipset based IDE Ports...

-MeTaL RoCkEr

My <font color=red>Z28</font color=red> can take your <font color=blue>P4</font color=blue> off the line!

 

[MeTaLrOcKeR]

BTW....that means you have to Install the Operating System witht he Hard Drive connected to that same IDE Controller I was telling you about.........I'd recoemmnd doing FDISK again, make everything off the same IDE Controller.......therefore there wotn eb any inacuracies.....

-MeTaL RoCkEr

My <font color=red>Z28</font color=red> can take your <font color=blue>P4</font color=blue> off the line!

 

[FUGGER]

I found this problem a week ago as I tried to use a pair fluid barring drives. These drives work on normal ATA chain, but when attached to a HPT raid controller they fail when you go to fdisk the drive stating "Drive x is not accesable" there is no other difference that I can tell between fluid and regualr barring drive other than the part number and where they are made.

I have tried to swap out the fluid barring, but they all produce the same result.

Abit should be posting a bullitin soon, they have confirmed the problem specificly with fluid barring drives.

There is no noticable loss in performance using the ATA133 drives on a ATA100 controller.

want me to post some performance number from these drives on HPT raid0?

 

[Matisaro]

Sure, post the results. I am an ide raid fan, like to see some performance.

"The Cash Left In My Pocket,The BEST Benchmark"
No Overclock+stock hsf=GOOD!