BSOD trying to install XP PRO, need HELP!

MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
edited December 2004 in Hardware
I've pretty much given up trying to put a SATA drive in my son's A7N8X deluxe system. It was working fine for over a year till he got some sort of virus at college on the Lan there. I tried both the original IDE maxtor and the new sata WD that I had fdisked/partitioned and tried installing XP pro on both to upgrade from XP home upgrade and I get BSOD on both while windows is attempting to install. I get various messages: Stop errrors and a bunch of numbers, memory errors, I can't really pinpoint what the problem is. I have two sticks of 256 samsung that were working fine in an KG7 for a year before placing in the Asus rig. I've cleared the bios settings, r and r'd the battery, checked everything for fit and proper plugin and nothing seems out of sort.
I can get the sata drive and the ide drive to both format and install XP pro from the KG7 rig but not from the Asus board. What am I missing? Do I need to perform some tests on the A7N8X board and if so what exactly do I need to do? I'm confused and put out AND broke. I need to get this back to my son at college and I need you guy's help!

Thanks all for any ideas you can throw at me. :scratch:

MGK

EDIT: The A7N8X green mobo light comes on every time I boot up so I'm (wrongly?) thinking that the mobo is OK.

Comments

  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited December 2004
    MGK, have you tried running memtest 86 on that computer yet? Maybe you are getting a stick of ram that's going out.
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited December 2004
    Hello Muddocktor! Thanks. No I haven't yet. They worked fine the same day in a different rig so I had faith in them. I might as well tho. Can I run it from a floppy on a rig with no HD?
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited December 2004
    Yeah, you can run it off a floppy with no hard drive installed with no problems.
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited December 2004
    Ok, I calmed down and thought about it and realized I forgot a few basics. I powered the rig down, cleared cmos with the battery out, ran memtest and it found nothing. No more blue screens, no lockups. Bad HD I guess. Win XP says it cannot format it due to possible damage. Is there a utility I can use to wipe the HD including any partitions so I can create new ones isolating the bad part of the HD and placing windows on a good partition? With no os installed delpart doesn't appear to work, can it/does it need to be bootable floppy.
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    Go to your HDD manufacturer's website and download the HDD diagnostic utility. You can low level format with it (afaik).
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited December 2004
    Thanks Blackhawk. I downloaded powermax and ran all the tests and it said it was all OK. Smart-tests and everything. So I ran quick LLF and it was fine. Ran the thorough LLF to destroy the partitions and it failed. Twice. Guess the HD's junk. At least I know why it was blue-screening now. Thanks everyone for the advice. Got a new WD coming now. That Maxtor didn't run much more than a year. First IBM and now Maxtor, piece of junk. :shakehead

    MGK
  • madmatmadmat
    edited December 2004
    Sounds like you're having almost as much fun as I am when it comes to PC problems, I hope that you get it all sorted out man. That WD a PATA or SATA BTW?
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited December 2004
    I mistakenly ordered an 80 gig WD800JD w/8mb cache SATA when I wanted the same in the IDE flavor. It's RMA'd now. I never had so much trouble installing a HD as with that SATA. Did everything as I was supposed to, with you guys' help to no avail. I see I'm not the only one after searching around for tips and hints either. :rolleyes: Maybe the next generation, but not now for this old man! Cheers Matt.
    MGK
  • MachineGunKellyMachineGunKelly The STICKS, Illinois
    edited December 2004
    It comes to mind that if you look at my sig you'll see that the two latest gen boards and harddrives have been less than 'ideal' shall we say. Two dead IBM 'deathstars', and a DOA Maxtor that had been raved about as well just a year or so ago. If you look down to the oldest rig you will see that it is stocked with a whopping 8.5 gig Seagate that came with the Cybermax Computer Co's kick-ass system of Christmas 1998. With an Abit KT7 Raid, 380 mhz athlon (pentium was only up to 350 at the time), and 128 mb's of 100 mhz memory. The only things that are still functioning from 7 years ago are the KT7 Raid mobo and the Seagate HD. I'D like to see Maxtor, WD, or IBM (Hitachi) touch that with a ten foot pole nowdays.......

    Just a thought people. Happy New Year! ;D

    MGK
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