Installation Completes, but Won't Boot

[montezuma]

Newly refurbished machine (kk266-r, Athlon 1.3GHz, 512MB) recently
fitted with a Silicon Graphics 3114 SATA RAID adapter and two mirrored
Samsung SATA drives.

New install of XP completed without a hitch (using F6 to load the RAID
drivers), but then trying to boot into XP fails. The machine hangs
before even getting to the boot screen with the travelling worm, waits
for a minute and then reboots.

Trying to boot into safe mode has the same result - it hangs after
mup.sys.

I'd welcome any thoughts on what's causing this, but I'd also welcome a
strategy for finding out what's going on!

TIA,
Monte

 

[Guest]

Is there a specific error message?

I have seen this problem. There is some way of disabling items during the
boot process.

Also, go into the bios & disable all onboard peripherals except the video,
if the video chip is built into the motherboard. If you have peripheral
cards [ sound, modem, network, etc ], remove them. Disconnect power & ribbon
cables to optical & floppy drives. If you have 2 SATA hard disk drives,
disconnect 1 of them.

run a diag on the ram, or if the ram is multiple sticks, for example, 2
sticks of 256 MB, try booting with just one of them.

run a diag on the hard disk drive; www.hgst.com , or a diag from your
specific hard disk drive manufacturer.

clean the installation cd.

best of success.

WC

 

[montezuma]

No, no error message, just a reboot.

Absolutely agree with your thinking and have loaded the most
conservative BIOS defaults, followed by disabling all the onboard
peripherals. I've also removed the NIC and USB 2.0 cards - so it's a
bare KT266 motherboard (that I know to work with XP) with an AGP
graphics card (that I know to work with XP) and the SATA RAID
controller (with BIOS and drivers that are also known to work with XP.)

Memtest is fine as is a harddrive test. With no feedback whatsoever
from XP it's difficult to know where to start....

 

[Guest]

Do you have a copy of W98, 2000 or ME you can install? If the problem
persists, we can't blame XP.

could be a ribbon cable or the power supply.

WC

 

[Guest]

Is this xp sp2? Check the motherboard and / or bios sites for an update.

Do you have a different brand / model [ newer ] motherboard available?

WC

 

[Guest]

See: http://www.anetforums.com/posts.aspx?ThreadIndex=40038

can you access the repair console by booting with the cd & going to
"repair"?

do you have an ide HDD onto which you can install Win XP?

potentially useful
http://www.pchelpforum.com/windows-xp-and-2000/12978-resolved-xp-boot-problems.html

WC

 

[montezuma]

Many thanks for your help, but I've got nowhere with this. It's the
complete absence of any error messages or other clues that's puzzling.
It's definitely down to the SI3114 SATA controller - installing to a
m/b connected IDE drive is fine.

Monte

 

[Guest]

Monte:
There you have it. Good job of troubleshooting!
I have used Adaptec SATA ASH - 1205SA boards for DVD burners and had no
problems.
Hopefully the SATA manufacturer or your local vendor will replace the board
or refund your money. If you paid by credit card, don't hesitate to contact
them for assistance.

WC