Fresh XP installation - 4 weeks of problems

TsukijinAkiyamaTsukijinAkiyama
edited October 2006 in Hardware
I'm running an AMD 64 3200+ on an Asrock vSkt AM2 ALiveNF4G-DVI board with a 500wATX PSU, 512mb DDRII ram and a 40GB seagate HDD. This is all new stuff which i have saved all my money to buy (I'm only 17).

I usually have no problems with XP but here are the monsters.

1) The boot from CD takes about 5 minutes to enter the initial setup screen
2) As soon as it formats the drive (which also takes years) and it installs the first set of files, it tells me it needs to restart, then as it does so, it restarts the 5 minute loading cycle and starts setup all over again. :bawling:

I have tried changing the boot device order and it says 'no proper boot device found,select a device or insert boot media' despite the fact that it CAN see the HDD.the DVD R/W and the 3 1/2" I have also tried simply removing the CD, to no avail.

Someone please help me, I really need this computer for my college work and I saved and worked so hard for it to just do this to me
Thanks.

Comments

  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited October 2006
    First... try testing your MEMORY with Memtest. That will tell you, 1) if your system can even boot from CD correctly, 2) determine if the memory is free from errors.

    Let Memtest run for as long as possible... 10 hours? At least one complete iteration.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited October 2006
    QCH2002 gave you excellent advice; I'd start there.

    If Memtest comes up 100% clean then I'd recommend that you run the hard drive test from Seagate.
  • TsukijinAkiyamaTsukijinAkiyama
    edited October 2006
    I'll start with these options then! I'll be pretty annoyed if either of these things have died though cause I paid good money for them and they're fresh out the boxes. Thanks for your help. x
  • TsukijinAkiyamaTsukijinAkiyama
    edited October 2006
    Now I'm getting the same message from trying to boot memtest from the floppy as I get trying to boot from the HDD ' No proper boot device selected' It picks out the HDD, DVD and 31/2" on POST but then it really wants to boot from CDRom. I'm so lost.
  • Datsun-1600Datsun-1600 Sydney.au
    edited October 2006
    Try reseating the RAM stick, then in bios set it to boot off the FDD.

    Datsun 1600
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    edited October 2006
    First, make sure your system is set to boot from floppy before trying to boot from hard drive. Those settings are in the BIOS. Worse case, unplug the hard drive from the system (disconnect the hard drive cable and power).

    I would download the zipped ISO and burn the ISO to CD. Then boot from the CD.
  • EssoEsso Stockholm, Sweden
    edited October 2006
    If the system doesn't boot correctly, both from the floppy and the CD.
    Then I suspect that the mobo / PSU to have some problem.

    Just to make sure, check all the cables from the PSU.

    Check that the CD is connected to IDE 1 slot, and the HDD to IDE 2 slot.
    (I assume it's an P-ATA drive you are using).

    If problem still exist. Try this ...
    • Use only one memory stick at the time.
      ( please check the manual were it should be inserted )

    • Disconnect the HDD and the CD.
      ( you don't need those to get into bios ).

    Note,
    As an last option insert the mem stick in the other mem slots, not given by the manual.
    As far as I recall some users have been successful doing this.
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