My P4C800-E and Me

[Bill Anderson]

Thursday was a holiday last week (Veteran's Day) and I had Friday off, so
when I arrived home on Wednesday afternoon to find my new motherboard and
memory and processor had all arrived via FedEx just when I was expecting
them, I was delighted that I had plenty of time to upgrade my computer and
have days left over to play this weekend.

I started to work Wednesday afternoon, and I'm still at it this afternoon --
6:15 pm Sunday. That's right, I have done nothing nothing NOTHING for the
past 4 and a half days but work on my computer. Wake up, work until x a.m.,
go to bed, get up, work until x a.m. agian. Quick trip to the computer
store, spend more money, and back to work. I've sat here at this computer
all day every day since Wednesday afternoon. Right here. In this chair.
Every day. Every hour. Since this past Wednesday. Here. Me. Doing
nothing but work on this computer.

If I were to try to tell everything that I've done, that's gone wrong,
that's illogical, that's unimaginable, I could type a small book. But I
won't do that to you. No, I won't let my frustration bubble over, let my
anger manifest itself, let my ignorance become public, let my true feelings,
true feelings, true ........ ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

I will not cuss. I will not. Not me. No. I will not fret that I needed
to spend some time in the office this weekend to prepare for the trip to
Orlando tomorrow. No I won't fret over that. I'll just get up at 5:00 a.m.
tomorrow and head to work and spend the morning doing all I shoulda done
today while I was installing Windows 2000 and Windows XP and re-installing
and re-installing and re...............ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!

You got some suggestions, some helpful recommendations, some words of
wisdom? WELL SHOVE 'EM UP YOUR I will not cuss I will not cuss.

I want a dual-boot system. I had everything set perfectly this afternoon.
Beautiful Win2K. Outstanding WinXP. Then I tried to run Norton Ghost to
save both partitions in their pristine states. And Norton Ghost took over
my computer and rebooted and everything everything everything everything was
lost. At 3:00 p.m. today I had to start over. Start over. Over. Start
over. Again. Start over. Over. Over. I am not losing my mind. Over.
Again. Over. Over.

You want to hear about my new Asus board and SCSI? You want to hear? You
want to hear about scanners that BIOS thinks are hard drives? Well, you
will not hear, because I will not cuss. You want to hear about my new Asus
board and S-ATA? Well, you will not hear, because I will not cuss. Not
cuss. Not me. But I will SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEM!

And that's all I have to say about that.

Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Glad I'm Seeing The Light at the End of the Tunnel Now Favog

P.S. Is there any way to force an OS installation disk to designate the
three partitions on an S-ATA drive as C: D: and E: while two EIDE drives are
attached to the system? The only way I've found to make the system install
C: on the partition I want to be C: and D: on the partition I want to be D:
is to unplug the two EIDE drives, leaving the only HDD in the system my
S-ATA drive. Then the installation programs sees drives C: D: and E:. If
the EIDE drives are attached, the WinXP and Win2K installation programs will
insist that the slave EIDE drive is C: and the Primary is D: and the S-ATA
partitions are something else, I dunno, something off the wall. Is there a
more elegant solution to this little problem I've been having, other than
unplugging the IDE cable every time I need to run an OS installation
program?

 

[LeeBos]

I understand your frustrations, had similar problems setting up XP pro on my
P4C800E-D also. Don't know the answer to your drive questions because it been
over 6mo since I built mine. But I can give you a word of caution on using
Ghost. USE A GHOST BOOT FLOPPY! Do not, I repeat do not use ghost from within
windows, It changes the boot sector of your HDD. It makes a temp boot partition
and boots to dos from it to run, If it fails to boot, (mine did), you're
screwed and will have great difficulty getting things back to normal. You
probably already found out, the hard way. I did not have to reformat and
reinstall but I was swetting bullets for a while. Ghost from a boot floppy or
boot CD works fine.

Good luck.

 

[Bill Anderson]

I understand your frustrations, had similar problems setting up XP pro on my
P4C800E-D also. Don't know the answer to your drive questions because it been
over 6mo since I built mine. But I can give you a word of caution on using
Ghost. USE A GHOST BOOT FLOPPY! Do not, I repeat do not use ghost from within
windows, It changes the boot sector of your HDD. It makes a temp boot partition
and boots to dos from it to run, If it fails to boot, (mine did), you're
screwed and will have great difficulty getting things back to normal. You
probably already found out, the hard way. I did not have to reformat and
reinstall but I was swetting bullets for a while. Ghost from a boot floppy or
boot CD works fine.

Oh, I know that. I know that NOW! Yes, indeedy, I learned that little
lesson this afternoon, and I tried fixboot and fixmbr and nothing worked,
nothing but re-installing Win2K and then I actually fixed the WinXP
partition but it takes forever to boot now and I think I will have to go
back and re-re-re-re-re-install WinXP. Sigh.

Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Good at Re-Installing Now Favog