Reformat

[demento]

I an effort to having my computer on a clean slate, I tend to reformat my PC every 6-8 months. I have done this process a multitude of times without any problems, but this time I am running into a problem with Windows XP. I have reformatted and get the same results each time since the problem has started.

I have two hardrives in my PC, and just bought a new one awhile ago, I took out my old IDE slave drive, moved my former IDE slave drive up to master and my newly bought SATA II drive to my slave. Things went great on my first install of XP this summer. Well new year and a clean slate was what I was going for.

I format my drive completely, not the quick NTFS formatting. Things load up nicely I load up my nForce drivers for stability purposes (never had any trouble, but just to be sure), an anti-virus software and my wireless card drivers to connect to the internet. I then begin the process of updating Windows through Windows Update and since my copy of Windows XP is a launch copy, it is pretty bare and I need the works including SP2.

I get through one set of updates and do a restart, things are going great. I get to installing SP2 and then restart my computer and everything breaks down. Everytime I restart my computer after SP2 after going through the BIOS screen, my computer sits at a black screen for about 3-5 minutes. It then finally gets to a point where the screen is all black with a white progress bar at the bottom of the screen that goes the length of my screen (its not the XP splash screen with the green progress bar). For the progress bar to complete, it takes anywhere between 10-20 minutes before I finally get to the XP splash screen, where the process runs at a normal speed and XP works fine.

I mentioned my hardware just in case this is a hardware issue, which it may be, but something tells me that it may be a software issue also.

[patio]

You've mentioned 3 drives...which one did you install to ? ?

[demento]

I removed my former master drive because it finally gave up on me. I had a slave in at the same time. I took this slave and made it my master drive and went out and bought a SATA drive as my new slave. So my current setup is:

160GB Master IDE
500GB Slave SATA II

I have unplugged my slave when I did the last attempt at a reformat, so only my 160GB is in currently and I am still getting the same results. Because it is a 160GB HD on a launch XP disc, I am only able to format 137GB as the XP install does not recognize anything above that.

The thing that makes me think it is not a HD issue is that the computer is perfectly fine up until the SP2 update, and from there is when I get the insane loading times, but the playing field is still open to my master being faulty.

[patio]

Well the SATA is probably faster than the IDE drive.
You could try removing the IDE and installing to the SATA.
Early on in the install you will see a prompt for RAID/SATA drivers to hit F6.
At that point have the MBoard driver CD handy or DLoad and make a SATA driver floppy from their site if you have a floppy drive. Continue with the XP install and then install SP2 and all other updates after installing your protection applications.

I think you'll find the system a little faster with the install on the SATA drive even if the IDE doesn't have issues...
After that you can format the IDE's and use them for storage if they pass the diagnostics from their respective manuf. site...the downloads are free and will tell you how healthy each drive is.