problems with Win XP Pro installation

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Guest

Help, please HELP

I am having problems installing Windows XP Pro on a new computer

My old computer was out-dated so I purchased a “bare bones†kit from Tiger
Direct, assembled it and reinstalled my hard drive, floppy drive, CD/RW, AGP
video card and VGA monitor.

The new unit is as follows:
· ASUS A7V600-X mother board
· AMD Athlon XP2900+
· 1024 Mb PC3200 DDR 400 MHz memory
· VIA KT600/VT8237 chipset
· IDE ULTRADMA 100/133 drives
· Seagate ULTRA ATA/100, 80Gb Drive (this was reinstalled)
· 4 year old Sony CD/RW (this was reinstalled)
· BFG Asylum MX 4000 8X AGP 128 Mb Video card (this was reinstalled)
· VGA monitor (this was reinstalled).

Here is my problem:

Before I tried to install WIN XP Pro (new purchase w/SP2), I cleaned the HDD
using a utility (Secure Erase) to clean everything from the HDD (full drive
erase mode). Then using the Seagate set-up CD I formatted the HDD for NTFS.

On re-start I opened the BIOS and made everything possible AUTO or as
advised by ASUS and set the video aperture to 128 Mb.

On re-start with the Win XP Pro in the CD drive, Win XP Pro loaded a number
of files to the HDD but when it reached a screen labeled “starting windowsâ€
the computer shut down – no messages – just died. In order to restart I had
to turn off the power to the computer, wait several seconds and turn the
power on again.

I repeated the HDD clean, re-format and reload several times with the same
results. As I expected Microsoft’s telephone support was of NO HELP .

An odd occurrence was that I got a different series of screens on each
re-install attempt.

Since I had a very early upgrade version of Win XP Pro along with the
Microsoft S SP-1 and
SP-2 CDs, I tried to get it installed. It would get past the install SP-1
but when I put the SP-2 CD in the CD drive the same shut down occurred.

If you have any ideas what to try please send it to me.

Thanks for any help you can give.

John McNeirney
 
If you have SP1 and SP2 on cd's be aware that you do not need the SP1 cd.
SP2 supercedes and includes everything SP1 did.

Disconnect all external devices except the keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
Especially usb devices, like a printer.

I don't understand the references to SP1 and SP2, since you say you bought
XP Pro with SP2 included (a very good thing to have done, btw). It sounds
to me like the only discs you should use are the new XP Pro and the Assus
driver cd that came with your motherboard.

Some thoughts: You did not say anything about the power supply. How many
watts is it rated for? This is displayed on the side of the power supply.
If it is a budget box with a 300 W power supply you may be overloading it
(although it will be close). Try removing one of the memory modules and
trying again.

Stop cleaning the hard drive. XP Pro will do that fine during installation
when you get the other issues resolved. Do download the Seagate SeaTools
Desktop diagnostic software to your desktop from
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
and make a diskette (don't copy the download file to a diskette, you have to
doubleclick the downloaded icon to run a makedisk program). Boot the
computer with the SeaTools diskette and run the tests. It tests for proper
installation as well as health of the drive.

Post back with results.
 
I repeat the other words of advce about not wasting time with a disk format
etc in between installations.

There may be another conflict, depending upon your BIOS configuration. Here
without 'seeing' what's on your screens, I can suggest thet you make sure
that all you BIOS settings are appropriate to the hardware installed.

I could suggest that you 'trim' down to the bare necessities: one one hard
drive, one CD etc, thus eliminating possible sources of errors.

If with the trimmed down PC, you still get crashes, try reading any error
messages, if given in the BSOD.

If no errors are shown, you can attempt to reduce [some of] the
configuration conflicts, by pressing F7 during the initial installation
phase, do this when setup gives the message to press F6 to install RAID
drivers.

Setup will continue and 'overlook' certain system settings.

Once the system is running then you can look to see what conflicts arise.

Colin Barnhorst said:
If you have SP1 and SP2 on cd's be aware that you do not need the SP1 cd.
SP2 supercedes and includes everything SP1 did.

Disconnect all external devices except the keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
Especially usb devices, like a printer.

I don't understand the references to SP1 and SP2, since you say you bought
XP Pro with SP2 included (a very good thing to have done, btw). It sounds
to me like the only discs you should use are the new XP Pro and the Assus
driver cd that came with your motherboard.

Some thoughts: You did not say anything about the power supply. How many
watts is it rated for? This is displayed on the side of the power supply.
If it is a budget box with a 300 W power supply you may be overloading it
(although it will be close). Try removing one of the memory modules and
trying again.

Stop cleaning the hard drive. XP Pro will do that fine during installation
when you get the other issues resolved. Do download the Seagate SeaTools
Desktop diagnostic software to your desktop from
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/index.html
and make a diskette (don't copy the download file to a diskette, you have to
doubleclick the downloaded icon to run a makedisk program). Boot the
computer with the SeaTools diskette and run the tests. It tests for proper
installation as well as health of the drive.

Post back with results.

--
Colin Barnhorst [MVP Windows - Virtual Machine]
(Reply to the group only unless otherwise requested)
john conrad said:
Help, please HELP

I am having problems installing Windows XP Pro on a new computer

My old computer was out-dated so I purchased a "bare bones" kit from Tiger
Direct, assembled it and reinstalled my hard drive, floppy drive, CD/RW,
AGP
video card and VGA monitor.

The new unit is as follows:
· ASUS A7V600-X mother board
· AMD Athlon XP2900+
· 1024 Mb PC3200 DDR 400 MHz memory
· VIA KT600/VT8237 chipset
· IDE ULTRADMA 100/133 drives
· Seagate ULTRA ATA/100, 80Gb Drive (this was reinstalled)
· 4 year old Sony CD/RW (this was reinstalled)
· BFG Asylum MX 4000 8X AGP 128 Mb Video card (this was reinstalled)
· VGA monitor (this was reinstalled).

Here is my problem:

Before I tried to install WIN XP Pro (new purchase w/SP2), I cleaned the
HDD
using a utility (Secure Erase) to clean everything from the HDD (full
drive
erase mode). Then using the Seagate set-up CD I formatted the HDD for
NTFS.

On re-start I opened the BIOS and made everything possible AUTO or as
advised by ASUS and set the video aperture to 128 Mb.

On re-start with the Win XP Pro in the CD drive, Win XP Pro loaded a
number
of files to the HDD but when it reached a screen labeled "starting
windows"
the computer shut down - no messages - just died. In order to restart I
had
to turn off the power to the computer, wait several seconds and turn the
power on again.

I repeated the HDD clean, re-format and reload several times with the same
results. As I expected Microsoft's telephone support was of NO HELP .

An odd occurrence was that I got a different series of screens on each
re-install attempt.

Since I had a very early upgrade version of Win XP Pro along with the
Microsoft S SP-1 and
SP-2 CDs, I tried to get it installed. It would get past the install SP-1
but when I put the SP-2 CD in the CD drive the same shut down occurred.

If you have any ideas what to try please send it to me.

Thanks for any help you can give.

John McNeirney
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