A7N8X problems installing Windows XP Pro

[Kath Stennett]

My Dad has just built a PC based on the Asus A7N8X mobo. This is his first
build and seems to be fine except that he is having problems installing XP.
Unfortunaltely he lives a bit far away for me to visit so I'm having to try
to help going by what he tells me.

The PC POSTs OK - I know thats right as I have heard it say so when I've
been on the phone to him! BIOS recognises the presence of his hard disk
every time he boots up.

When running setup for the first time from CD this HD was formatted, it went
right the way through to 100%. Then some files are copied. At some point he
got a message about "ntldr" but after a reboot that message never recurred.
Some time after that he got an error message along the lines of "cannot find
hard disk". Now every time he tries to restart setup he gets this same
error. I suggested he enter the recovery console but he gets the same error
if he tries to do that too. He has checked the connections and the jumpers
etc and is pretty sure they are all OK.

Does anyone have any ideas for him to try or questions for me to ask him in
order to get to the bottom of this

Kath

 

[Jannik Ebbe Brich]

Hi !

Don't waste time on trying 2 get it working.

Download zap.exe (contains 2 fils, zap.com and zap.txt) from IBM. create a
bootdisk and throw the little bugger on it.

Run zap.com "zap 0" if this is the first HDD in the system.

Zap writes 0 2 the first 128 sectors of the HDD.

Then reinstall the system.-

Jannik

 

[Kath Stennett]

zap.exe(?) the very name of it sounds a bit drastic! Would FDISK do the same
job? I've used that before.

Kath

 

[Kath Stennett]

I found a link elswhere to download zap.exe but how do i use it?

Kath

 

[John Boy]

Hi Kath;
if XP is a pre SP1 version, there will probably be a hard stop error caused
by the motherboard trying to install the USB2 ports. The pre SP1 version of
XP regularly threw up ntdlr errors. I also had a problem where the
motherboard correctly detected the XP 2100+ CPU but wrongly detected it as a
Thoroughbred core when it was a Palomino; wrong vcore.

I would disconnect the hard drive, boot up holding the Delete key and check
that the BIOS settings are correct. If that is OK, then the info. on the
following URL may help (watch out for the URL wrap):
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prmb_tol_zldj.asp

John

 

[Jannik Ebbe Brich]

U make a bootable floppy (rigth click a: in xp, choose format put mark in
option system disk.)

Put zap.com executable on to floppy

Boot 2 floppy

At command promt write: zap 0

This will zap the first HDD in the system. If u have more than one HDD make
sure u zap the right one (disconnect the second !?)

Boot from CD and reinstall XP.

Jannik

 

[Tim]

Has he connected the IDE drive to an add-in controller rather than the
standard IDE controller?
What is the exact error message?

Reinstalling XP will likely recreate the problem at this point - zapping the
disc is likely to be a pointless exercise.

If the disc drive is not plugged in to the standard IDE controller (IE not a
raid or other add in controller EG Highpoint, Promise, Silicon Image) you
may get a problem like this where a device driver needs to be supplied
during XP setup - you do so by pressing F6 right at the start - there is a
prompt at the bottom of the screen that appears during the start of windows
install. You will need the device drivers on floppy if you are going to keep
the disc drive on this interface.

- Tim

 

[Jannik Ebbe Brich]

I agree !

However - his MB does not contain a RAID ctrl and It does not sound like he
is using anything but the onboard ATA 133 ctrl.

Jannik

 

[Kath Stennett]

Well, the mobo does actually have SATA connectors too - its the deluxe
version. But no Dad isn't using them and the drive is being plugged directly
into the onboard IDE1 connector

Thanks for all your help. There are a few things here to try

Kath

 

[Kath Stennett]

When trying to get into the recovery console he just gets the same message
about not being able to find a hard disk.

 

[Kath Stennett]

Have sent instructions to Dad who will try this tomorrow.

Thanks

 

[Kath Stennett]

I hope you are still there!

Dad dowloaded zap.exe from this link

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe
and saved it directly to the boot disk. He booted the PC with the diskette
and typed zap 0.

He got a long paragraph of text which talked about "self extracting "
something. Then it said "searching for a:zap.exe" and
then back to the A prompt.

Was that it?
I really wish I could get down there and see whats going on this telephone
support is soooo frustrating!
Thanks for you help so far
Kath

 

[Jannik Ebbe Brich]

He he

Zap.exe is a sfx archive.

Contains 2 files zap.txt and zap.com

Jannik

 

[Kath Stennett]

Right I thought it might be something like that but was worried to tell him
to run something like zap.exe on a working pc. So I guess he has to run
zap.exe on a working pc to extract the files, then its zap.com and zap.txt
that go on the bootable floppy.

We'll try again!

Kath

 

[Jannik Ebbe Brich]

If in doubt just write zap.com

Without the 0

Then u get the command list.

Jannik

 

[Kath Stennett]

OK. Well in fact the disk is a Western Digital one and on a visit to the WD
site I spotted their own diagnostic toolkit. So instead of using zap I got
Dad to use that. He was able to run a full test on his disk which reported
no errors. He then used the option to Write zeros. So we have zapped!

Now I had suggested that instead of going down the XP route he try
installing from a Windows 98 CD. Each time he tried this he got the
following sequence of events;

The PC posts OK. Lists its components and says its booting from CD-ROM. Then
he gets "Nvidia Boot agent Media Test Failure" sometimes it also tells him
to "check cables". He's sure the cables are all OK.

What does this mean? Is the Win98 CD duff?

Anyway after a few tries at this he decided to try the WinXP installation
disk again and the following happened;

PC Posts etc. The hard disk gets formatted. Quite a lot of files get copied.
Says Welcome ... press enter to continue. Dad pressed enter and then gets
the message "Can't find hard drive" .. exactly back at square one! This is
precisely what happened first time he attempted to install XP.

Anway at least it seems like the HD is actually OK and we know we can get
back to square one if we need to.

Any more thoughts?

Kath

 

[MrDancer]

OK. Well in fact the disk is a Western Digital one and on a visit to the WD
site I spotted their own diagnostic toolkit. So instead of using zap I got
Dad to use that. He was able to run a full test on his disk which reported
no errors. He then used the option to Write zeros. So we have zapped!

Now I had suggested that instead of going down the XP route he try
installing from a Windows 98 CD. Each time he tried this he got the
following sequence of events;

The PC posts OK. Lists its components and says its booting from CD-ROM. Then
he gets "Nvidia Boot agent Media Test Failure" sometimes it also tells him
to "check cables". He's sure the cables are all OK.

What does this mean? Is the Win98 CD duff?

Anyway after a few tries at this he decided to try the WinXP installation
disk again and the following happened;

PC Posts etc. The hard disk gets formatted. Quite a lot of files get copied.
Says Welcome ... press enter to continue. Dad pressed enter and then gets
the message "Can't find hard drive" .. exactly back at square one! This is
precisely what happened first time he attempted to install XP.

Anway at least it seems like the HD is actually OK and we know we can get
back to square one if we need to.

Any more thoughts?

First, try booting to the C:\ using a Windows startup floppy (either Win98
startup disk or XP startup disk). Once at the C:\, type in FDISK and let it
do it's thing. It should ask you if you wish to enable large drive support
(hit enter for the default "Y"). It will also ask you to label the drive,
which you may or may not want to do. After doing the FDISK, you will have
to reboot, then try booting to and installing the WinXP.
Don't worry about formatting the HDD, as WinXP should do this for you during
the install - generally preferable to format to NTFS.

If that doesn't work:
Try booting from the WD floppy, install and format the HDD to FAT32, then
try installing Win98SE. If you can do that, then the disk is fine and you
should be able to upgrade the Win98SE to WinXP (and possibly to NTFS file
system).

Your Win98SE install might not be working now because the disk is currently
unformatted.

 

[Kath Stennett]

I really don't think LAN is in his list at all Tim but I will ask him as
soon as I can ... think he's out today.

Kath

Kath,

"Nvidia Boot agent Media Test Failure" may be to do with booting off a LAN -
PXE Boot. Hence check cable as he may not have an ethernet cable plugged
in...

Get him to check the order of boot devices. At a guess it may be: Floppy,
CD, LAN, HDD - if the HDD is in the list.

Get him to change it to either:

Floppy, CD, HDD, none or
CD, HDD, none. or

HDD, none

I always remove Floppy from the list - never use floppies anyway, but if
there were one in the drive and it had a virus...

- Tim

OK. Well in fact the disk is a Western Digital one and on a visit to the WD
site I spotted their own diagnostic toolkit. So instead of using zap I got
Dad to use that. He was able to run a full test on his disk which reported
no errors. He then used the option to Write zeros. So we have zapped!

Now I had suggested that instead of going down the XP route he try
installing from a Windows 98 CD. Each time he tried this he got the
following sequence of events;

The PC posts OK. Lists its components and says its booting from CD-ROM. Then
he gets "Nvidia Boot agent Media Test Failure" sometimes it also tells him
to "check cables". He's sure the cables are all OK.

What does this mean? Is the Win98 CD duff?

Anyway after a few tries at this he decided to try the WinXP installation
disk again and the following happened;

PC Posts etc. The hard disk gets formatted. Quite a lot of files get copied.
Says Welcome ... press enter to continue. Dad pressed enter and then gets
the message "Can't find hard drive" .. exactly back at square one! This is
precisely what happened first time he attempted to install XP.

Anway at least it seems like the HD is actually OK and we know we can get
back to square one if we need to.

Any more thoughts?

Kath

If in doubt just write zap.com

Without the 0

Then u get the command list.

Jannik

Right I thought it might be something like that but was worried to tell
him
to run something like zap.exe on a working pc. So I guess he has to run
zap.exe on a working pc to extract the files, then its zap.com and zap.txt
that go on the bootable floppy.

We'll try again!

Kath

He he

Zap.exe is a sfx archive.

Contains 2 files zap.txt and zap.com

Jannik

"Kath Stennett" <[email protected]> skrev i en meddelelse
I hope you are still there!

Dad dowloaded zap.exe from this link

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe
and saved it directly to the boot disk. He booted the PC with the
diskette
and typed zap 0.

He got a long paragraph of text which talked about "self

extracting

"
something. Then it said "searching for a:zap.exe" and
then back to the A prompt.

Was that it?
I really wish I could get down there and see whats going on this
telephone
support is soooo frustrating!
Thanks for you help so far
Kath

Have sent instructions to Dad who will try this tomorrow.

Thanks

U make a bootable floppy (rigth click a: in xp, choose

format
put

mark
in
option system disk.)

Put zap.com executable on to floppy

Boot 2 floppy

At command promt write: zap 0

This will zap the first HDD in the system. If u have more

than
one

HDD
make
sure u zap the right one (disconnect the second !?)

Boot from CD and reinstall XP.

Jannik





"Kath Stennett" <[email protected]> skrev i en
meddelelse
I found a link elswhere to download zap.exe but how do i

use
it?

 

[Kath Stennett]

First, try booting to the C:\ using a Windows startup floppy (either Win98
startup disk or XP startup disk). Once at the C:\, type in FDISK and let it
do it's thing. It should ask you if you wish to enable large drive support
(hit enter for the default "Y"). It will also ask you to label the drive,
which you may or may not want to do.

Actually Dad did try FDISK. After the low level format and a couple of
attempts at installing Win98. He booted using a Win98 startup diskette. This
gets to the A: prompt just fine. But it no good trying to get to C:, theres
nothing on it, its not formatted. He tried running FDISK from the diskette
but it didn't recognise the hard disk.

After doing the FDISK, you will have

to reboot, then try booting to and installing the WinXP.
Don't worry about formatting the HDD, as WinXP should do this for you during
the install - generally preferable to format to NTFS.

Well we didn't do the FDISK bit but we did try the XP install as described
in my post it got to just after the welcome screen and then said it couldn't
find the hard disk, this despite the fact it had formatted it and copied
files to it

If that doesn't work:
Try booting from the WD floppy, install and format the HDD to FAT32, then
try installing Win98SE. If you can do that, then the disk is fine and you
should be able to upgrade the Win98SE to WinXP (and possibly to NTFS file
system).

Do you mean the floppy with WD disgnostics on it? I don;t think there is a
choice to Format from there. Surely the disk is fine if the WD tests ran
without finding errors. Dad ran both the quick and full tests.

Your Win98SE install might not be working now because the disk is currently
unformatted.

I thought Win98SE installation did a HD format just like the XP one does?

 

[Kath Stennett]

OK. I just found the How to FAQ on the Microsoft site. So the HD has to be
partitionsed and formatted prior to running setup for win98.

But Dad siad FDISK failed! I'll get him to try that again.

Kath

The problem is quite simpel

win98Se CD-Rom is not bootable !!! So the BIOS can't find any OS

Jannik

I really don't think LAN is in his list at all Tim but I will ask him as
soon as I can ... think he's out today.

Kath

Kath,

"Nvidia Boot agent Media Test Failure" may be to do with booting off a LAN -
PXE Boot. Hence check cable as he may not have an ethernet cable plugged
in...

Get him to check the order of boot devices. At a guess it may be: Floppy,
CD, LAN, HDD - if the HDD is in the list.

Get him to change it to either:

Floppy, CD, HDD, none or
CD, HDD, none. or

HDD, none

I always remove Floppy from the list - never use floppies anyway, but if
there were one in the drive and it had a virus...

- Tim





OK. Well in fact the disk is a Western Digital one and on a visit to the
WD
site I spotted their own diagnostic toolkit. So instead of using zap

I
got

Dad to use that. He was able to run a full test on his disk which reported
no errors. He then used the option to Write zeros. So we have zapped!

Now I had suggested that instead of going down the XP route he try
installing from a Windows 98 CD. Each time he tried this he got the
following sequence of events;

The PC posts OK. Lists its components and says its booting from CD-ROM.
Then
he gets "Nvidia Boot agent Media Test Failure" sometimes it also

tells
him

to "check cables". He's sure the cables are all OK.

What does this mean? Is the Win98 CD duff?

Anyway after a few tries at this he decided to try the WinXP installation
disk again and the following happened;

PC Posts etc. The hard disk gets formatted. Quite a lot of files get
copied.
Says Welcome ... press enter to continue. Dad pressed enter and then gets
the message "Can't find hard drive" .. exactly back at square one!

This

is
precisely what happened first time he attempted to install XP.

Anway at least it seems like the HD is actually OK and we know we

can
get

back to square one if we need to.

Any more thoughts?

Kath

If in doubt just write zap.com

Without the 0

Then u get the command list.

Jannik

Right I thought it might be something like that but was worried to
tell
him
to run something like zap.exe on a working pc. So I guess he has to
run
zap.exe on a working pc to extract the files, then its zap.com and
zap.txt
that go on the bootable floppy.

We'll try again!

Kath

He he

Zap.exe is a sfx archive.

Contains 2 files zap.txt and zap.com

Jannik

"Kath Stennett" <[email protected]> skrev i en meddelelse
I hope you are still there!

Dad dowloaded zap.exe from this link

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe
and saved it directly to the boot disk. He booted the PC

with
the

diskette
and typed zap 0.

He got a long paragraph of text which talked about "self
extracting
"
something. Then it said "searching for a:zap.exe" and
then back to the A prompt.

Was that it?
I really wish I could get down there and see whats going on this
telephone
support is soooo frustrating!
Thanks for you help so far
Kath

Have sent instructions to Dad who will try this tomorrow.

Thanks

message
U make a bootable floppy (rigth click a: in xp, choose format
put
mark
in
option system disk.)

Put zap.com executable on to floppy

Boot 2 floppy

At command promt write: zap 0

This will zap the first HDD in the system. If u have

more
than

one
HDD
make
sure u zap the right one (disconnect the second !?)

Boot from CD and reinstall XP.

Jannik





"Kath Stennett" <[email protected]> skrev i en
meddelelse
I found a link elswhere to download zap.exe but how do

i
use