New System... Weird booting problem... plz help
ok... where do I begin... I'm building a new system for a friend.. this will be my third system and happy to say the first two went smoothly... but this time it's a diff story. First I'll give the general specs:
-Athlon 64 (3200)
-Maxtor 80 GB (sata)
-Sony Cd/dvd combo drive
-Sony floppy drive
-2GB Corsair ValueSelect (DDR 400/PC 3200)
-Radeon X800GTO (PCI-Ex16)
-(Case) Antec P160-WF
-(PowerSup) Antec SmartPower 2 (400W)
-(Mobo) See below...
Now.. the original mobo I ordered and tried with this system was an Abit AN8-SLI and here was my problem:
Once I had assembled the system, I attached my keyboard/mouse/monitor from my working system and began... I powered up the system, POST was successful... popped in the new(legit) windows XP disc I purchased and booted from cd... ran the necessary procedures to format the drive via winxp disc and then began the setup... the system proceded with copying the setup files and successfully completed that process... then the system restarts as part of normal windows installation procedure... but here comes the kicker... when the system restarted it restarted as if I never began the windows setup... the option to boot from cd would appear b/c of the disc still being in the drive but once that timed out the system would just reboot, it wouldn't continue the windows setup/installation... and unless I hit the power it would continously perform this loop of reboot-POST-reboot... so i tried everything I could think of.. removed the disc, changed 1st boot device to hard drive and disable the rest... tried every sata slot on the board... tried multiple sata cables... tried barebone system with just that hard drive... attempted MULTIPLE reformats & reinstallations of XP... tried multiple valid XP discs... tried clearing the cmos (both battery & jumper way)... oh, and the hard drive is detected correctly in the BIOS by the way... So then I decide to try a whole new drive all together. So I took out my 2nd drive in my working PC (after moving everything to my primary of course) which is a Maxtor 160GB /IDE drive... i'm thinking maybe an IDE will solve the mystery... but no... the EXACT same problem... installation begins... completes the "copying setup files" part and then performs its necessary reboot and *BLAM* it won't boot from the HD. In the meanwhile I pop the sata drive into my working pc and there it is... working perfectly... and as expected there was a windows folder created on it with all the setup files that had been copied... So I then shutdown MY pc and booted from the windows disc and ran an install on the sata drive and everything ran smoothly... completed the install with no problems.
My PC specs:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
Athlon 64 (3200)
2GB Corsair ValueSelect (DDR400/PC3200)
Radeon 9600 PRO (I know.. it's old)
Soundblaster Live 5.1
Maxtor 80 GB (IDE)
Maxtor 160 GB (IDE)
So at this point I figured, ok, it has to be the mobo. So I ordered a new mobo (MSI K8N Neo4)... figured everything worked fine in my Neo2 this should do the trick. Hooked it all up today and ran the setup... guess what.. same F*N problem. Boots from disc fine... copies all setup files to the hard drive.. reboots, POST, then will not boot from HD... someone please help!
-Athlon 64 (3200)
-Maxtor 80 GB (sata)
-Sony Cd/dvd combo drive
-Sony floppy drive
-2GB Corsair ValueSelect (DDR 400/PC 3200)
-Radeon X800GTO (PCI-Ex16)
-(Case) Antec P160-WF
-(PowerSup) Antec SmartPower 2 (400W)
-(Mobo) See below...
Now.. the original mobo I ordered and tried with this system was an Abit AN8-SLI and here was my problem:
Once I had assembled the system, I attached my keyboard/mouse/monitor from my working system and began... I powered up the system, POST was successful... popped in the new(legit) windows XP disc I purchased and booted from cd... ran the necessary procedures to format the drive via winxp disc and then began the setup... the system proceded with copying the setup files and successfully completed that process... then the system restarts as part of normal windows installation procedure... but here comes the kicker... when the system restarted it restarted as if I never began the windows setup... the option to boot from cd would appear b/c of the disc still being in the drive but once that timed out the system would just reboot, it wouldn't continue the windows setup/installation... and unless I hit the power it would continously perform this loop of reboot-POST-reboot... so i tried everything I could think of.. removed the disc, changed 1st boot device to hard drive and disable the rest... tried every sata slot on the board... tried multiple sata cables... tried barebone system with just that hard drive... attempted MULTIPLE reformats & reinstallations of XP... tried multiple valid XP discs... tried clearing the cmos (both battery & jumper way)... oh, and the hard drive is detected correctly in the BIOS by the way... So then I decide to try a whole new drive all together. So I took out my 2nd drive in my working PC (after moving everything to my primary of course) which is a Maxtor 160GB /IDE drive... i'm thinking maybe an IDE will solve the mystery... but no... the EXACT same problem... installation begins... completes the "copying setup files" part and then performs its necessary reboot and *BLAM* it won't boot from the HD. In the meanwhile I pop the sata drive into my working pc and there it is... working perfectly... and as expected there was a windows folder created on it with all the setup files that had been copied... So I then shutdown MY pc and booted from the windows disc and ran an install on the sata drive and everything ran smoothly... completed the install with no problems.
My PC specs:
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
Athlon 64 (3200)
2GB Corsair ValueSelect (DDR400/PC3200)
Radeon 9600 PRO (I know.. it's old)
Soundblaster Live 5.1
Maxtor 80 GB (IDE)
Maxtor 160 GB (IDE)
So at this point I figured, ok, it has to be the mobo. So I ordered a new mobo (MSI K8N Neo4)... figured everything worked fine in my Neo2 this should do the trick. Hooked it all up today and ran the setup... guess what.. same F*N problem. Boots from disc fine... copies all setup files to the hard drive.. reboots, POST, then will not boot from HD... someone please help!
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Comments
If that doesn't work, see if you can get through the Windows installation using an old Video Card (PCI-based if you have to). If that gets you all the way through the process you can then try putting the new card back in.