New computer not working. Grr!

[Shana-chan]

Okay, details on the computer:

ASRock 775V88/+ Motherboard
ATI AIW Radeon 9600 128MB
Intel Pentium 4 3.4 GB
Maxtor 250 GB IDE HDD
Sony DVD-RW
Generic brand DVD-ROM
1 GB RAM

Running Win XP or Win 2K.

Okay, here's the issue. We put everything in, start everything up, install Win2k, works alright.. We install WinXP, and hubby gets a virus, and it starts multiplying, so I press the power button on his tower. Start it back up and get a 'The disk drive is corrupt. Retry or Cancel?' We try putting the WinXP disk in, and when the CD loads, it refuses to load the WinXP setup. Just a black screen and no sounds from the computer.

We send the harddrive back, and install the new replacement drive. It isn't reading the replacement drive right (it think's it's a LSXTOR instead of a Maxtor). I switch the IDE cables and it recognizes the drive properly, and we install WinXP. It installs fine, reboots and when it tries to load.... nothing... Just a black screen..

I end up downloading the Maxtor large drive setup boot disk and loading the computer with it, formatting the drive, and then partitioning the drive before install WinXP. I try with a 1/2 partition.. does the same thing on startup. I try again, with a 80 GB partition, same thing.. Finally, I use a 60GB partition, and it installs and loads properly.

That sort of works; however, nothing is installing properly onto the computer. All the programs are taking forever, and XP is taking 3 minutes to open a file that should only take 5 seconds.

Now my husband used XP to setup his drive into partitions (two 60GB drives and one large 120+GB drive for storage) with the drives set up as C:, F:, and G:. He started the computer using the Windows 2K setup disk, and installed it on drive F:. It rebooted, gave a quarter-of-a-second glance at the 'Which operating system would you like to load?' screen, and then the monitor went black, again. >.< It had highlighted one, so I hit the enter button, and nothing happened. However, pressing ctrl-alt-del did restart the computer.

He managed to highlight XP on a reload, and it tried to load Win 2k, but said that a file was corrupt. The file was listed as 'C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEMd' Or something similar. I know for a fact that it said 'SYSTEMd'. @_@

What the *censored* is going on?! Can anyone help? Please? @_@

[Flame]

I'm not sure if this will help, but have you tried reseating the RAM?

Flame

[Shana-chan]

I'm not sure if this will help, but have you tried reseating the RAM?

Flame

I haven't yet. I haven't thought that it might be the RAM. I'll give that a try if things still aren't installing right.

[GX1_Man]

Once it gets running you will probably need to delete the partition, recreate it and then reinstall Windows. you may have hosed that during this process.

[Flame]

The only reason I would suggest that is that MAYBE the virus is keeping something in memory, which is infected... Not sure if that's a true, but who knows.

Flame

[Shana-chan]

Once it gets running you will probably need to delete the partition, recreate it and then reinstall Windows. you may have hosed that during this process.

Nope, I didn't hose anything. If you read all the way, you'll note that I redo the partitions with each install, because it only works with a 60GB partition or smaller, and we want the drives as large as possible. (I'm positive I noted that I remove the partitions and repartition at 60GB).

[GX1_Man]

Now my husband used XP to setup his drive into partitions (two 60GB drives and one large 120+GB drive for storage) with the drives set up as C:, F:, and G:. He started the computer using the Windows 2K setup disk, and installed it on drive F:. It rebooted, gave a quarter-of-a-second glance at the 'Which operating system would you like to load?' screen, and then the monitor went black, again. >.< It had highlighted one, so I hit the enter button, and nothing happened. However, pressing ctrl-alt-del did restart the computer.
 
He managed to highlight XP on a reload, and it tried to load Win 2k, but said that a file was corrupt. The file was listed as 'C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEMd' Or something similar. I know for a fact that it said 'SYSTEMd'. @_@

That doesn't sound un-hosed. XP is on the C drive and Win2K is on the F? And it doesn't work right?

[Shana-chan]

Now my husband used XP to setup his drive into partitions (two 60GB drives and one large 120+GB drive for storage) with the drives set up as C:, F:, and G:. He started the computer using the Windows 2K setup disk, and installed it on drive F:. It rebooted, gave a quarter-of-a-second glance at the 'Which operating system would you like to load?' screen, and then the monitor went black, again. >.< It had highlighted one, so I hit the enter button, and nothing happened. However, pressing ctrl-alt-del did restart the computer.
 
He managed to highlight XP on a reload, and it tried to load Win 2k, but said that a file was corrupt. The file was listed as 'C:/WINDOWS/SYSTEMd' Or something similar. I know for a fact that it said 'SYSTEMd'. @_@

That doesn't sound un-hosed. XP is on the C drive and Win2K is on the F? And it doesn't work right?

When I run MaxBlast, it creates a 8.4 GB partition. When I INSTALL windows, I delete those partitions and create NEW ones, which is what was referred to earlier. Those particular partitions were created with Windows, and Win2K decided to *censored* up the disk drive letters, which is why it didn't work.

It's not hard to understand. >.< I'm asking WHY the system doesn't start when we install using the whole disk unpartitioned.

[Backdated]

You must get the BIOS to see the drive correctly before attempting any installations.

It isn't reading the replacement drive right (it think's it's a LSXTOR instead of a Maxtor). I switch the IDE cables and it recognizes the drive properly, and we install WinXP.

Get it to the stage where POST correctly reports it and we'll go from there.

[Shana-chan]

You must get the BIOS to see the drive correctly before attempting any installations.

It isn't reading the replacement drive right (it think's it's a LSXTOR instead of a Maxtor). I switch the IDE cables and it recognizes the drive properly, and we install WinXP.

Get it to the stage where POST correctly reports it and we'll go from there.

I AM at that part. Please read the entire post. Reading only part of it isn't helpful. ;_;


Edit: I wanted to add that the reason it wasn't showing up correctly was the IDE cable was bad. I don't know what happened, but when I switched the cables, it showed up properly.

[Shana-chan]

1. This is a 250 GB drive. How big was the one you had before and how big was the original?

This is a brand new system, and both harddrives were the same size (same brand and type, different/newer model).

2. What are you using to partition the drive with, XP?

When we actually got it to run XP, we were using that. What we use at the base (non-OS stage) is the actual Windows setup program.

3. Has the XP CD got SP2? (If not you could slipstream it with SP2 and RyanVMs update pack using nLite.)

No, it has SP1, but it worked on the whole drive on the first drive, and only this drive completely refuses to work above a 60GB partition. What's nLite? @_@

4. Has the 2000 CD got the latest Service Pack?

No, and service pack 4 completely screws up our systems.

5. Have you had a look in Device Manager to see if the controllers are running on UDMA or PIO?

I haven't, however the BIOS says 'UDMA6' in the model name for the harddrive.

6. How are the three partitions formatted?

Well, right now they're not. :/ It's pretty dead.. When they were partitioned, it was 60GB, 60GB, and then the remainder (125 or so?). The first partition was formatted in the Windows setup, and the rest were in XP. They were all NTFS format.

7. Have you run a memory diagnostic test and the drive makers diagnostic tests?

I haven't, but I have been checking all the drives and memory chips and making sure they work properly (checking in Windows, moving them around physically, and checking in the BIOS) and they all work fine. The only real problems were having is with the harddrive.

When we were running XP, however, the OS would NOT let us install anything properly, and everything was taking forever to load. When we ran Win2K, everything installed fast and easy, and ran in good time.

Update on our situation: we formatted the drive last night, put in a 60GB partition using the Windows installer, and installed Win2K. It worked well for a while. Then we installed Service Pack 3 (because 4 messes up our video and game codecs for some reason) and it did the black screen thing again.   This is getting really bothersome. I even reseated the RAM, and put it in a different slot, and blah, and still nothing! I'm checking the jumpers today, and after that... well, I might get a sata adapter and see if that makes it run better or not.

[Shana-chan]

If it is a single drive on an 80-wire IDE cable have you set the jumper to Master or Cable Select?

Sometimes there is a another jumper setting to limit the capacity of the drive. Be sure that you got it right.

I'm assuming it's on cable select. We've been going through options of what the problems could be a day at a time, and last night it occured to me that it may be that the drive needs to be a master, and the cable has stuck it on slave.. But it wasn't working when the cable was calling it a master, so I don't know. Wish me luck, I guess.

[Shana-chan]

Update: I switched the jumper onto the Master setting, and went into the BIOS. The BIOS showed different settings for it, so I tried installing Windows XP on the WHOLE drive. Didn't work.. Still just a black screen after the BIOS and CD/DVD drives load.

[Shana-chan]

If it is a single drive it should probably be set to Cable Select and, of course, be plugged into the end (black) connector. It is actually illegal to plug a single drive into the slave connector and leave the end connector unused.

Check the C.R.A.P. link below for more info.  

I just plugged it into the one that was working best. :/

[Shana-chan]

If it is a single drive it should probably be set to Cable Select and, of course, be plugged into the end (black) connector. It is actually illegal to plug a single drive into the slave connector and leave the end connector unused.

Check the C.R.A.P. link below for more info.  

I just plugged it into the one that was working best. :/

\ö/

I suspect that the IDE cable may have been pulled on and might be damaged. I would fit a new 80-wire flat screened IDE cable and see if that improves things.

The latest cables tend to have a higher data transfer rate as the material used to produce the wires has less resistance, and they are not expensive.

Well, I did put a newer one on. ^^; This whole thing is really confusing.. We've been going through this sort of thing since I got it for him (it was a Christmas present). -_-; Maybe this harddrive is just blown as well?

Do you think a sata drive would work better?