I've pretty much finished rebuilding my son's PC, but so far have been unable to load an operating system, Either XP Pro or Vista Home Premium.
I think it must have something to do with the BIOS setup. The HD I'm attempting to install on is a SATA 250 GB Western Digital (Does SATA have anything to do with the problem?). The Mother board is an ASUS A8V-X with the latest BIOS (A8V-X BIOS 0703).
I had 4 sticks of PC 3200 512 Crucial memory installed, but learned at the Crucial website that this MB only supports two banks of PC 3200, but up to 4 sticks of PC 2700. I tried 2 sticks of 512 PC 3200; I tried 1 stick of 512 PC 2700, but am unable to install an OS.
I formatted the drive as Primary partition using Acronis Disk Director. Booting with the XP Pro Install CD, the installation reaches a point where it chokes on loading Drivers.dll with a message "Cannot copy (x).dll, (x).exe, etc. Retry/Ignore/Quit.
I have reformatted using the XP Pro install disk, but run into the same problem over and over.
Check your harddrive settings in the bios. See if your bios will let you select native harddrive support or legacy, something like that. If it only supports sata, then you will need to slipstream XP with the sata drivers.
Johnny
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#3. "RE: Can't load OS" In response to bobbo (Reply # 0) Sat Oct-04-08 12:32 AM by ablib
That problem is either a dirty/scratched disk or bad RAM.
I would start swapping out sticks and play with it.
And only use the XP disk to delete partitions and format the disk.
This is all assuming the disk is clean and not scratched. You have 4 sticks of RAM try it with one stick at a time. Use the quick format while you're experimenting with sticks, if you get through that file copy part and found your good sticks then start the install over using the not quick format option.
#5. "RE: Can't load OS" In response to ablib (Reply # 3) Sat Oct-04-08 03:53 AM by bobbo
I'm pretty sure that the RAM is good, as it had been working well in my own PC for quite a while, up until a couple of weeks ago. I updated to 2 sticks of 1GB and transferred the 4 512s to the rebuild.
Edit: The following is found in the BIOS:
WDC2500AAKS-OB3A0 LBA Bode Supported
LBA/Large Mode - Auto Block(Multi-sector transfer)M - Auto PIO Mode - Auto DMA Mode - Auto Smart Monitoring - Auto 32 Bit Data Transfer - Auto
Using the XP Pro setup CD, I deleted the partition created with Acronis Disk Director and did a quick format of the drive.
I have tried installing with the original XP setup CD, a slipstreamed XP CD with SP2, and a slipstreamed XP CD with SP3. Each one chokes during the transfer of files to the SATA drive.
I have a 40 GB ATA HD that I'm going to try and see what happens. (Can I put XP Pro on a 40 GB HD?)
#8. "RE: Can't load OS" In response to ablib (Reply # 7) Sat Oct-04-08 07:06 AM by bobbo
Quote:
You can try the 40GB drive, but I already gave you the most known solution.
If the 40 GB works, at least I'll know the problem lies with the SATA. I'm certain that the memory is good. I tried 3 different XP install disks with the same result, so they all can't be damaged. I even tried a Vista install disk which balked. Of course, it could be the new MB.
If you are not using Raid then these should be set at :-
MAIN tab -------- SATA Configuration
SATA configuration "enhanced" Configure SATA as "IDE"
(If you have this setting) HARD DISK Write Protect "Disabled" SATA Detect Time Out "35" (I have mine at "25")
The settings may be correct, but you never know.
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