GOOD LORD I NEED HELP! Upgrade problems.
 

I just bought a real nice new setup. Asus P4P800 Mobo, P4 2.8GHz, 1gb Corsair PC3200 RAM. Good, right?

Well, I haven't been able to install winXP on it, and after 10 tries, I am going insane. Here's what I did.

I have attempted installation with a combination of the following:

IBM 60gb Deskstar HD
Maxtor 40gb HD

TDK 32x CD-RW
Creative DVD-ROM
Toshiba DVD-ROM
Plextor 16x CD-RW

Windows XP install disc
Windows XP with SP1 install disc

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Ok (please note, I install on a barebones system to avoid as many HW conflicts as possible)
1. boot from install CD
2. install 3rd party RAID drivers 'cause mobo comes withh onboard raid (don't worry, I dont use it)
2. kill c: partition, create c: partition (sometimes I skip this step)
3. start install process
--setup starts copying files for the installation to the hard drive. After it reaches about 27%, it starts giving me errors that a file could not be copied to the HD. I hit enter to retry until it goes through. I have resorted to just setting a heavy battery on my enter key and sitting back while it rapidly retries almost every file it tries to copy. Eventually the progress bar reaches 100% and the computer reboots.
--Sometimes I get a BSOD and I need to manually reboot the computer. It's random every time. The files that it fails to copy are never the same either. It's inconsistant.
4. if the file copy process goes through, then the install starts. If I am lucky enough to survive through this without a BSOD (it's happened a few times) then I am greeted with several more errors "file ******** failed to copy" for which I just hold down the enter key to keep retrying until it finally goes through.
5. Out of 10 tries, 3 times I have reached the part where windows successfully finishes install/setup and actually boots up. When it actually boots up, however, several things dont work. Windows Update crashes IE, it wont detect one of my 5 hard drives (added after install) and it tells me that every single file I download from the nvidia website is corrupted (as if those are the only problems.. yeah right)


So, please help me. I am at the end of my string. I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have in the spirit of support.

Have you tried installing the RAID with just the mobo drivers? Have you tried installing without a RAID at all?

I recieve slightly better results if I use the 3rd party RAID drivers than if I don't. I have the onboard RAID disabled in BIOS, however.

Couple of things you can try:

Make the HD you are installing the OS to the master on the onboard raid controller. Then try the install. If this doesn't work, move the drive to another machine, format the drive and copy the contents of the i386 directory to the HD and install from the HD. After the install on the second machine, run sysprep and shut down. Move the drive back to the original machine and boot up. Your new hardware will be detected and installed. Sysprep can be found on the windows CD in /support/tools/deploy.cab

Just a shot in the dark, but worth a try to circumvent the file transfer process. Could be a bad ribbon cable.

thanks for that idea.. I'll definately try it out

any more ideas? first-hand experience? I still have 7 hours until I get home to try it all out.

change your memory timing speeds to something ultra stable. If you aren't going to use the raid ports right now, go ahead and disable them. (You can always reenable them when you are done installing windows)

Seems like you may be using the raid drivers though because of the fact that you have 4 cd drives :) my god..that's more then you need.

Also don't put the 40 gig on the raid controller until you are done installing windows.

please read: barebones


I know how to install an OS, thankyouverymuch

Re: GOOD LORD I NEED HELP! Upgrade problems.
 

I've had that happen to me a few times in the past....seems it was bad memory everytime. Corsair is good shit. Check the mem timings, and maybe swap in a different stick.

One other minor thing...if the RAID is disabled in the BIOS, you don't need to install the third party drivers...I usually don't at this point even if I am using the RAID, I wait and do it through windows later.

I've had the same thing happen to me, my problem was that the Win XP cd was scratched so the cd rom wasn't reading the cd. the cd wasn't even scratched badly, I tryed to clean it but still no luck. then I used BlindWrite and made a backup copy and that work, no more file errors. hope this helps a little.

Halx, if your post was meant for me I didn't mean to suggest you don't know how to install the os.

Otherwise I suggest what I say, because if you have both harddrives on the raid controller at the same time as the install..it can fark up windows when it's installing. The raid controller is the middle man, and when it has multiple drives on it during a windows install it can makes things act a little wacky.

Also as I said before and Cocktopus mentioned again..check those ram timing settings.

What <i>mpedrummer2</i> said. Why are you hitting F6 on install if your RAID is disabled?