Windows XP Pro wont install (Black screen)
The Problem:
Windows XP Pro won't install, I get a black screen right at the beginning (after pressing enter at the "Press any key to boot from CD"). http://www.short-media.com/forum/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=8#
The Hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Athlon 64 3500+
Club3D Geforce 7800GT PCI-E
2 x 1GB Kingston 400MHz DDR
Maxtor 160GB HDD (SATA)
Facts:
-Everything works fine in Gentoo Linux
-Windows Setup starts fine when no HDD is connected
-Memory passed 12 hours of Memtest86+
-I have tried with the HDD connected to the Nforce4-SATA controller and to the Silicon Imaga 3114 SATA-RAID controller.
-I've tried with a genuine Windows XP Professional and not-so-genuine Windows XP Pro SP2.
Any thoughts, anyone?
Windows XP Pro won't install, I get a black screen right at the beginning (after pressing enter at the "Press any key to boot from CD"). http://www.short-media.com/forum/newthread.php?do=newthread&f=8#
The Hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Athlon 64 3500+
Club3D Geforce 7800GT PCI-E
2 x 1GB Kingston 400MHz DDR
Maxtor 160GB HDD (SATA)
Facts:
-Everything works fine in Gentoo Linux
-Windows Setup starts fine when no HDD is connected
-Memory passed 12 hours of Memtest86+
-I have tried with the HDD connected to the Nforce4-SATA controller and to the Silicon Imaga 3114 SATA-RAID controller.
-I've tried with a genuine Windows XP Professional and not-so-genuine Windows XP Pro SP2.
Any thoughts, anyone?
0
Comments
--When it worked--
First thing I did on this computer was install linux, then I made a partition (Primary 4) for XP. I installed XP fine on this machine. Going to say that something went wrong completley unrelated to XP or Linux (User error) and I needed to repartition the drive. This time, I tried to plan the deployment a little more.
--When it stopped working--
I created (Primary 1) as NTFS for my XP install, prim2 for /swap, 3 / and 4 was an extended for all of the /home /var kinda things.
Got LInux running the way I like it, and went to install windows on the first partition. However, now when the system boots up, you get the "Press any key to boot from CD..." prompt, you press any key, you see for a brief moment, "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration" and then the screen goes black.
--Specs--
AMD Athlon 64 3000
MSI K8N Neo4
WD 160GB SATA (SATA2? I dunno)
MSI NX6600 PCIE Video
Any help here would be appreciated.
--Some things I have tried--
rerunning lilo
Installing lilo to MBR
Installing lilo to bootsector
Unistalling lilo (lilo -u /dev/sda)
changing first partition to NTFS
changing first partition to linux
deleting first partition
using separate video output from card
using a different xp cd (OEM)
using a different xp cd (SP2 MSDN copy)
Disconnecting the SATA cable allowed setup to run as well;
This is telling me that there is something on the drive it doesn't like. Probably the linux partitions? Why, though, did it work the first time?
I was thinking that I didn't uninstall the previous XP from the 4th primary partition before I was trying to reinstall to the first. Something told me that there may be something left in the MBR that was confusing XP. It was looking for an XP install on a linux partition.
Through linux I formatted the MBR;
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
Then, from the linux setup, I replaced the partitions with fdisk. Wow, Linux is the superman of operating systems; after replacing the partitions the OS still worked! To anyone trying this, you have to make sure the exact sectors are in the exact same place when you do this or linux will most probably choke.
Well, XP installer works with a clean MBR now.
Hope this helps someone out there.
Thanks for your reply profdlp. I think this may work, but XP likes to stretch itself over the whole drive and use its own "Virtual" partitions. In the past I have found it difficult to install Linux after XP on a fresh disk. If I am wrong please correct me =).
I'm not a linux expert by any stretch - anyone else want to comment on this?
Did anyone ever work this out? I'm still having this issue on my secondary PC and I remember when I posted about this god knows how long ago (when I saw this link I Google I assumed it was my thread) no-one had any idea then either.
thank you
would installing a lower os like 98 or the new windows 7 make a difference?
Doesn't matter, it's the partition table it doesn't like, if you're using the whole drive then you need to WIPE THE MBR and PARTITION TABLE. Nothing else will suffice.
Actually a format only wipes the partition you're formatting, it wont wipe the partition table which is what was the issue before. I had to use dd to wipe the first few raw MB of the drive before XP setup would actually start.