XP Pro OEM installs, Academic Upgrade doesn't

[Guest]

What's going on here. I find it impossible to install Windows XP SP2 using my
XP Pro Academic Upgrage CD (and putting Win2000 CD in drive at appropriate
point). I am installing onto SATA drive (WD2500) connected to Gigabyte
K8NuSLI motherboard, specifiically onto the SATA ports connected to nForce4
chipset. If I use F6 to load drivers for the nForce4 SATA RAID drivers (2 on
floppy), the install freezes right after the message "Setup is starting
Windows." This is the installation method Gigabyte told me to use. However, I
found that if I just didn't install use F6 at all, then the installation goes
much further. It gets to the first reboot, has me set up the clock, enter my
product key, and set up network. Then it says something about Startup Menu,
and dies with
Error copying file iexplore.ex_
It has a window to browse for the file, and the file is actually right on
the CD (I386) where it is looking for it! It just can't copy it, or its the
wrong version or something. I even tried preparing a floppy with that file,
but it refused to accept it. If I say to continue install anyway, theres a
gazillion other files that it can't find (though they are on the CD!) or
won't copy. Note that the XP CD is an SP2 version.

OK, now here's the really wierd part. I also have an older OEM XP Pro
(non-upgrade) CD, but I won't be able to activate it because it is from
another computer. So I tried using that CD to install to my SATA drive. If I
load the drivers for SATA, the same thing happens, it dies after saying
"Setup is starting Windows." But if I DON'T load the drivers, the
installation proceeds successfully.

I conclude two things, but have no solution to my problem because I don't
feel like chucking a $109 CD and buying a $139 one. What I conclude is:
1a. The nForce4 hardware or drivers, or my motherboard is incompatible with
upgrade versions of Windows XP or
1b. ditto for Windows XP SP2 or
1c. The "academic upgrade" version sucks
AND
2. Gigabyte tech support is clueless. They don't even know how to install XP
onto their own motherboards.

 

[peterk]

Is that the board that has 4 SATA connectors??
2 of them with Nvidea drivers and the other 2 with Silicon Image drivers
???????????????????????????????
peterk

 

[Guest]

Actually, it has *eight* SATA connectors, 4 for each. I have the WD drive
hooked up to the first of the 4 NVidia ones, though this connector is
actually in the 3rd position, looking at them from the front of the case.

 

[Guest]

BTW, I thought maybe I could "upgrade" the XP Pro SP1 installation using the
Academic Edition XP Pro SP2 Upgrade version disk. I ran the upgrade from
within XP and it loaded a few files and then rebooted. There was a choice of
2 OS's and I picked the "upgrade" choice. At some point I entered the Product
Key of the Upgrade version that I eventually want to "activate." So, it
looked good. Unfortunately, it eventually got around to copying files to the
disk from the CD and AGAIN DIED when it tried to copy IEXPLORE.EX_.

BTW, relative to your question about the number of SATA connectors, I
noticed that Asus equivalent motherboard, only allows the first two of each
of the SATA connectors to be connected to boot disks. Maybe there is some
limit of number of potential boot disks?

 

[peterk]

My thinking was that maybe you used the wrong drivers for the SATA
connectors but there is also the possibility that only certain connectors
are bootable.
Only your manual will tell you for sure
peterk

 

[Guest]

Someone at Western Digital told me that indeed Gigabyte had given me bum info
-- I am only supposed to load the 2nd of the two drivers on the floppy disk,
the one called NVidia Storage Contoller. He says I am NOT supposed to load
the NVidia RAID driver if I have one disk. So I will try that in a couple
hours.

OTOH, he also says that you can't use an "upgrade" version of Windows XP to
load it onto an empty disk. Can you verify whether that is true or not? At
the beginning of the installation, it asks me to put the install disk from a
qualifying prior version of Windows into a CD drive. I do that (it's a
Windows 2000 Pro Upgrade CD) and it then continues the installation. IIRC,
to load Windows 2000, I had already formatted my HD, so the Win2K upgrade
actually asked me to load not only a Win98 CD into the CDROM drive, but also
a WIN95 CD! Has this policy changed, so that I will need to actually
*install* Windows 2000 onto the Western Digital disk before it will install
Windows XP PRO?

 

[peterk]

I have an upgrade version of XP and an upgrade version of ME but an original
version of 98.
If do a new install I use the 98 CD to verify that I have a previous version
of an OS that qualifies for an upgrade version of XP to be installed.If You
have a 98 CD use that as the qualifier.
You really should not have to install 2000 in order to install XP....it just
needs to see the 2000 CD in the drive.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/upgrading/matrix.mspx
peterk

 

[Guest]

I agree with everything you said -- I've done several instlallations from
upgrade CDs when the disk was empty and just inserted the Win2k Cd when it
asked for a qualifying CD. It is clear to me that my motherboard, and
probably ALL NForce4 motherboards are incompatible with the Academic Upgrade
version of XP. There is absolutely no way to get it to work

Is there really any difference bewteen the academic upgrade version and the
normal upgrade version? Gigabyte claims that the NForce4 drivers from NVidia
are not compatible with the academic upgrade version.

I thought maybe my media was defective, because 1) it takes much longer to
copy files during the installation than during an XP OEM installation and 2)
it took over 30 minutes to copy the I386 folder to a directory on another
computer. So, I got a new copy by exchange of the XP Pro Upgrade Academic
Edition. The order of install on this new one seemed a bit different, but the
end result was EXACTLY the same. I got the same doggone error that it
couldn't copy file IEXPLORE.EX_. Again, the file is definitely there, it just
wouldn't copy it. By the way, I've also replaced my power supply, checked and
changed memory half a dozen times, etc. I am utterly disgusted with Gigabyte
and will never buy one of their products again. Is there an installation log
file that would tell me why it couldn't/wouldn't copy that file?

I really don't have much time for this, I bought a new XP PRO OEM CD tonight
and will install it tomorrow. Screw the doggone academic edition.

 

[Guest]

Well, it has nothing to do with academic edition vs. full version or with
upgrade vs. non-upgrade. I bought a new XP Pro OEM version, with the same
results. I MUST HAVE HARDWARE ISSUES. I had already tried 1 stick of GEIL
PC4000 512M ram instead of 2, and that made absolutely no difference. When I
took both out and put in 1 stick of 512M Kingston ValueRAM, I did not get the
Error copying IEXPLORE.EX_. No, but it just died "registering components"
with 13 minutes remaining. Well, I think it died. The green dots were still
flashing at the bottom and the message on top changing every minute, but
there was no disk activity for 10 minutes. I left it to run while I return to
work.

I really, really, really don't think the DDR is bad. I think it is a
motherboard issue, since, even in this motherboard, both sticks of Kingston
and both sticks of GEIL test out perfectly using memtest86 and another ram
diagnostic whose name escapes me. And this same RAM was running reliably in
another motherboard.

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Note this as #1 then see Below.

Call this #2. I've seen this kind of thing on a SATA drive with an ASUS
motherboard. I've also seen it when the Windows setup files were out of
synch with the files on the media.

It's possible that these two problems are unrelated.

In the case of #1, the hard-drive drivers may be working fine, but
Windows won't start for some other reason (video port, or who knows?)

In the case of #2, it may be that you didn't load the SATA driver and
now the drive geometry is being mis-reported to the o/s setup program.

Can you borrow and IDE drive?

 

[Guest]

Gerry, thanks for getting involved here!
You must not have noticed my last post of 8/1 before your reply. I think
ISSUE#1 has to do with a defective OEMSETUP.TXT file from NVidia, but a few
people have told me that if the RAID function in the BIOS is disabled, then
no drivers are necessary. Also, I did manage to install Windows XP PRO OEM,
pre-SP2 version, without any problems, on this disk, but, again, that ONLY
WORKED when I loaded no drivers. Unfortunately, I can only use that SP1
installation for 30 days, since it is from another PC.

But notice from my last post on 8/1 that changing the DDR memory resulted in
different behavior -- it now almost completes the installation. But even the
fact that the failure mechanism changed when changing memory points to a
hardware problem on this board. Maybe I'll get home tonight and see that it
really did finish?! Dunno, I watched it do nothing for 10 minutes with
"registering components" on the bottom of the screen and I didn't see any
disk activity.

re:>Call this #2. I've seen this kind of thing on a SATA drive with an ASUS

motherboard. I've also seen it when the Windows setup files were out of
synch with the files on the media.

Interesting, I thought it must be something like that, because the files are
actually on the CD and if I copied iexplore.ex_ to a floppy, it refused to
load it from the floppy either.

I already know that I can install to an IDE drive on this motherboard. Maybe
I should do that and then clone the partition to the SATA 2 drive.

Petz