Windows black-screens rather than starting setup
Enverex
Worcester, UK Icrontian
Again, trying to set up Windows on this machine for some games and some rare programs but Windows refuses to work.
I put the XP CD in, turn the computer on. It says "Press Any Key to Boot from CD" so I press a key, the CD reads for about a second and then it stops with the HD light stuck on. It doesn't say "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration" and it doesn't reach the actual blue setup screen.
The machine is an Athlon64 3800+ (socket 939) on an Asus A8N-E motherboard trying to install onto a 500GB SATA RAID0 array on the nForce onbuilt controler.
The machine has no memory errors and it isn't overheating.
I put the XP CD in, turn the computer on. It says "Press Any Key to Boot from CD" so I press a key, the CD reads for about a second and then it stops with the HD light stuck on. It doesn't say "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration" and it doesn't reach the actual blue setup screen.
The machine is an Athlon64 3800+ (socket 939) on an Asus A8N-E motherboard trying to install onto a 500GB SATA RAID0 array on the nForce onbuilt controler.
The machine has no memory errors and it isn't overheating.
0
Comments
The problem was caused by the fact that there were no IDE/SCSI/SATA drives connected, only the SATA RAID array. Disconnecting the RAID or adding a normal SATA/IDE disk made the problem go away.
To install Windows I just ended up having to do a workaround by installing to an old drive I managed to salvage from somewhere and then clone the partition to the RAID array (which I installed AFTER Windows setup was completed and I had installed the nForce platform drivers). It seems this is the ONLY way to install Windows with this issue. Meaning if you don't have a spare drive then you're screwed.
Also, Media-Man's guide doesn't work either, Windows setup will still ask for the 'nVidia Driver RAID Disk' if you try that method. What DOES work is if you download the archive "MakeDiskV6.65" from Asus (or wherever you can find it) and use that to generate a driver floppy disk for you.