New system freezes while installing Win XP

[Guest]

Hi all,

Just built a new system (my first try at building from the ground up). Using Asus A7v266-e, AMD 2100+, geforce 3, herc game theater, non raid, wd 40 gig, acer cd rom, sony 1.44 and win XP oem full version.

I installed all the pieces and after a few small glitches I am up and running (I learned that the 1 pin on the floppy is on the other side of the drive from where it is on the CD and HD!). The computer booted in safe mode and took me to bios and I set the right speed for the CPU and went through the post fine. FDISKed the hard drive and booted to windows XP install.

The program quickly looks at my set up then does the starting windows XP thing. As I get into selecting items if I don't do it right away the system freezes (it's like the keyboard is locked). So, for instance, when I go to choose which drive to install Win XP on, as I use the arrow key to move down the list of drives, I can move down the list (I have the drive partitioned for 3 logicals) but when I start to move back up the list the computer freezes. If I do it real quick (just hit the enter key) it moves me to the next step. Anytime I take more that a few seconds on a step it freezes.

It did let me install Win 98se upgrade with no problem. I'm stumped on this.

I did notice that IRQ 5 seems to be shared by the "mass storage device" and the 3 USB buses. And in Win 98 I have a ? other for mass storage, when I installed the IDE driver that came on the Asus disk it corrected it (not sure how that works with the 4 in 1 IDE drivers).

BTW I took out the audio card and NIC so only the G3 AGP card is still in the system.

It sounds like I've got a conflict or have something messed up in the BIOS (I have not upgraded BIOS it is the one that came with the Mobo). About all I changed in the BIOS was to make the ACP default, disable the onboard sound chip and make the CD boot after the floppy.

Any ideas on this?

 

[Guest]

Okay,

Got the solution to this one. Thanks go to the guys on the homebuilt user group.

I installed the most recent bios (1006) and in the bios manually set the processer speed lower than is should be. For my 2100+ the lower setting is the 1.2/1.4 option. Ensure Normal is selected vs optimal in the setting 2 down (normal is the default).

Then do the Win XP install. Worked fine for me. After the Win XP install change it back to the real speed and things work fine

 

[Strife]

I am not sure wheter your board has the optional promise controller, but if it does maybe this will help.

I have found that on some motherboards with promise controllers you need to install ide drivers prior to installing XP, the same way you would if you were going to use a raid controller even if the promise controller is set to regular ide mode!

I had a similar problem with a Soyo Dragon Plus. This motherboard has four ide channels. Two powerd by the chipset and two powered by a integrated promise controller. Under 98X windows detected the promise controller just fine, but when installing Windows XP it choked. I switched channel and it installed fine, but I was unable to get the promise controller working. It turned out that the promise controller had to be installed before the via controller and only way to do this was to reinstall the OS this time installing the promise ide drivers before installing Windows XP. When I did this all 4 ide channels worked fine.

So if your motherboard has the raid option (has 4 ide slots) you might want to

1) Make sure that your boot drive is connected to a ide channel associated with the via controller and not the promise controller.

2) Download the Promise Ultra Family drivers and put them on a floppy. Then press F6 at the install screen and follow the directions for installing third party drivers for a controller card.

3) Some motherboards with promise controllers have a jumper that switches between regular ide operation and raid mode. If you are not using raid you should make sure this jumper is set to ide mode.