Hardware Issues Causing Win XP Install to Fail?

[brucek]

I'm having some Windows XP install issues, which appear to relate to hardware, although I'm not sure which hardware. I'm not sure where to go next with this, and would appreciate anyhelp that anyone might be able to suggest.

I have bought the components for a new system (all below are new);
ABit BD7II main board
P4 1.80A CPU (512K cache)
1*512M PC-2100 DDR (Crucial).
LeadTek GeForce 3 Ti200
40GB HD ATA 100 (IBM) on IDE 1 (I intend to migrate a 60G drive from my current machine as a "slave")
Samsung DVD drive on IDE 2
Sound and NIC are integrated peripherals on the motherboard).

My Windows XP is the Home Upgrade version. I've tried both installing XP as the sole OS, and validating prior OS by showing the XP setup a Win98 CD at the appropriate time; and by actually installing Win98 on C:, and doing a
"clean install" on D: (both partitions on the same HD).

Win 98 installs perfectly. When I go to try any install of WinXP, I get stop errors during the course of the install, actually in the early stages when "installing devices", and from then on throughout the install. The only course of action is to reset and start over (one time I got to "less
then 1 minute", then a stop code! Messages accompanying the stop codes usually indicate the "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" error, although I've seen also
"INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR" once, and a page file error, also an error indicating I should run CHKDSK /F (HD issue?).

When I finally did get XP installed, I then kept getting stop errors when installing other hardware. The crunch was that when attempting to install an NIC (either on the mobo, or a PCI card), I kept getting the error (after
the install wizard had run) "There was a problem installing this Ethernet controller. An error occurred during the installation of the device. The data is invalid".

My choices are now to RMA any hardware for an exchange / replacement, but I don't know where to start. This is my second motherboard, I started off with the ABit BD-7, but got POST errors (A7) before boot time. A suggestion
was to me was that the BD-7 needed a BIOS upgrade to handle the new P4 chip, so I got an ABit BD-7II. At least it boots, although a POST error did still initially occur which appeared to go away when re-seating memory.

I don't know whether to send the entire hardware back to the vendor (www.mwave.com), and re-order the same or even re-design my system and order a new config. Can anyone advise any logical steps to take from here, like
what hardware might be the issue here? I'm perplexed.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Artmic]

I ordered some stuff from Mwave yesterday also, how long did you wait before you got your order home?
as for you problem, i'd play around with the least amount of hardware on the motherboard, and if it runs fine, just add hardware to the motherboard and see how it functions, if all else fails, just return all the stuff...

So in win 98 everything works fine, but with the XP upgrade you get weird stuff happenin'

what happens if u wipe a drive totaly clean and install full version of XP on it?

 

[brucek]

Hi,

I find mwave really good- I usually specify 2 day shipping, and it's always there in 2 bus days- sometimes one. Their RMA process works well, and on this specific issue they've offered to take everything back and test / install WinXP (I supply the OS CD), and I only pay the shipping. I've only read one complaint in all my research, and that's because they wouldn't ship to a different address than on the internet order form (phone request). Go figure......

Bruce.

 

[Artmic]

Thanks for the info, i hope my purchase will arive soon, i also got 2 day air shipment, but i had to do a wire transfer lol so they haven't even shipped it yet. i hope they do that tomorrow.

 

[brucek]

Good luck with your new hardware.

Bruce.

 

[Cybercraig]

God does this sound like Deja vous! I would suggesy starting over with one drive and Win 98. After you get every
-thing up and running I would check all hardware to make sure it is XP compatible. Some hardware (modems, cards etc.) will never be or drivers will be unavailable. After evrything is burned in on Win 98 try the upgrade again. I cannot believe a class vendor like MWave is sending you consecutive bad parts. (Though it could happen). I personally have an A7V Asus that was nothing but trouble on '98 and ME. Upgrade to XP was tricky, but all my problems went away. US Robotics modem would not work with XP so I switched to Blaster. No problems now. GL

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