Windows installation and failing

[Tool]

I built a computer with a friend the other day, I've built several
computers and they all came out just fine. This one however, gets
past all the booting and posting, you can sit in the bios all day and
its fine, but when you boot from the xp install it gets 1-3 minutes
into reading from the disk with that blue screen as its getting ready
to install. When it gets here it just shuts off, the power just cuts
off to the tower. I think the mobo may have a faulty power switch
mechanism, but I'm not sure. He is useing a western digital SATA
160GB hard drive, a gigabyte GA-IK1100 mobo and the 3.0E Prescott P4,
along with a gig of value select ram in dual channel, he has 2 cd
drives and a floppy as well, all the wiring has been checked and is
in order. The computer doesn't shut off in the bios though, so its
not time related, you can let it sit in the bios for 10 mins, reboot
and boot from xp cd and it'll crash in under 5 mins. Any help in this
matter would be greatly appriciated, if not I'm personally guessing
send back the mobo, as I had a similar issue to this once and sent
back the mobo and got a new on and I've never had it since.

Also, I've consulted the manual and found nothing of any real help for
this problem. The HDD is recognized as IDE 3 and it won't recognise
the second cdrom on the first IDE channel. So the 1st IDE channels
master is in place, a dvdrom, but the cd burner in 1st slave isn't
showing at all, and the HDD is showing in IDE3.

==============
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[David Maynard]

I built a computer with a friend the other day, I've built several
computers and they all came out just fine. This one however, gets
past all the booting and posting, you can sit in the bios all day and
its fine, but when you boot from the xp install it gets 1-3 minutes
into reading from the disk with that blue screen as its getting ready
to install. When it gets here it just shuts off, the power just cuts
off to the tower. I think the mobo may have a faulty power switch
mechanism, but I'm not sure. He is useing a western digital SATA
160GB hard drive, a gigabyte GA-IK1100 mobo and the 3.0E Prescott P4,
along with a gig of value select ram in dual channel, he has 2 cd
drives and a floppy as well, all the wiring has been checked and is
in order. The computer doesn't shut off in the bios though, so its
not time related, you can let it sit in the bios for 10 mins, reboot
and boot from xp cd and it'll crash in under 5 mins. Any help in this
matter would be greatly appriciated, if not I'm personally guessing
send back the mobo, as I had a similar issue to this once and sent
back the mobo and got a new on and I've never had it since.

Also, I've consulted the manual and found nothing of any real help for
this problem. The HDD is recognized as IDE 3 and it won't recognise
the second cdrom on the first IDE channel. So the 1st IDE channels
master is in place, a dvdrom, but the cd burner in 1st slave isn't
showing at all, and the HDD is showing in IDE3.

Are you hitting F6 and installing the SATA drivers, and any other mass
storage drivers that motherboard may need?

 

[Dave E]

Hi Tool,
The only time I had an identical problem as yours was after I had
successfully built my latest computer. I decided to clean out and "renovate"
my old one.When it was all back together I thought I'd re-install Windows to
give everything a fresh start (my wife is now using it). Windows install
would just freeze, but not neccessarily at the same point. Sometimes the
freeze would occur seconds into the install, sometimes several minutes. It
would complain of being unable to find various files on the cd rom.
I was reluctant to put it down to a hardware fault as I hadn't actually
removed anything for cleaning.
For some reason, I don't know why, I removed 500mb of memory from one of the
memory slots and tried that. That cured it. Installed perfectly and is still
stable one month later.
HTH
Dave.

I built a computer with a friend the other day, I've built several
computers and they all came out just fine. This one however, gets
past all the booting and posting, you can sit in the bios all day and
its fine, but when you boot from the xp install it gets 1-3 minutes
into reading from the disk with that blue screen as its getting ready
to install. When it gets here it just shuts off, the power just cuts
off to the tower. I think the mobo may have a faulty power switch
mechanism, but I'm not sure. He is useing a western digital SATA
160GB hard drive, a gigabyte GA-IK1100 mobo and the 3.0E Prescott P4,
along with a gig of value select ram in dual channel, he has 2 cd
drives and a floppy as well, all the wiring has been checked and is
in order. The computer doesn't shut off in the bios though, so its
not time related, you can let it sit in the bios for 10 mins, reboot
and boot from xp cd and it'll crash in under 5 mins. Any help in this
matter would be greatly appriciated, if not I'm personally guessing
send back the mobo, as I had a similar issue to this once and sent
back the mobo and got a new on and I've never had it since.

Also, I've consulted the manual and found nothing of any real help for
this problem. The HDD is recognized as IDE 3 and it won't recognise
the second cdrom on the first IDE channel. So the 1st IDE channels
master is in place, a dvdrom, but the cd burner in 1st slave isn't
showing at all, and the HDD is showing in IDE3.

==============
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troubleshooting newsgroups.

 

[Mac Cool]

(e-mail address removed)-spam.invalid (Tool) said:

This one however, gets
past all the booting and posting, you can sit in the bios all day and
its fine, but when you boot from the xp install it gets 1-3 minutes
into reading from the disk with that blue screen as its getting ready
to install. When it gets here it just shuts off,

I had a very similiar problem... I built a new system and wasn't able to
install XP, the system would just shut down; oddly, I was able to install
a Linux distro. I called MS and we discovered the problem, unfortunately I
don't remember the solution. What I'm suggesting is that you call
Microsoft and try their technical support. If you have reservations about
calling tech support, don't. MS has a super tech support staff. The tech
that helped me with the installation problem kept in touch to make sure
the problem was resolved.

 

[devicex]

any ideas as to what could be the issue of it not even turning on now?
(problem stated in my above thread) I changed nothing and after one
of its shutdowns during xp install it will no longer start up, at
least no longer than half a second. Thanks.

==============
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[cryptz]

hi there could be a # of problems at fault here

first id pull any of the devices off the ide chain that arent being
recognized, i doubt they are the culprit but u might as well take
them out of the scenario right away anyways.

The fact that it doesnt reboot in the bios isnt very telling, the bios
is generally not very taxing on the computer. The recomendation for
the f6 drivers are correct, however they would be supplied with the
motherboard not hte hard drive, if you are able to see the sata hard
drive during windows setup that meants that the sata controller card
is somewhat supported by windows by default and you may not have to
hit f6 to supply the drivers, typically a sata controller card is not
recognized by windows during setup, there fore the hard drive is not
recognized and you are not able to install windows on that drive
without first hitting f6 and supplying the drivers.

as i said there are a # of things that can cause the problem your
having. I would verify that the front side bus settings are correct
in the bios, you could be overdriving your memory, underdriving your
cpu, etc, make sure that the cpu is recognized as the proper one and
verify your front side bus settings

The crash could also be from some for of currupting that is occuring
while the os is running, i would say the 2 most likely culprits of
this would be a bad memory stick, u mention u have a gig, try takin
out a stick at a time and seeing if u can get it to work with only
512, or idealy try a different stick u know to be good, the other
likely curruption would again be from using a sata controller card
with some sort of generic driver that may not be functioning
properly.

There could also be a problem with the board itself, there could be a
problem you can fix by flashing the bios, either with a new version,
or with the same version if there is not a new one

And finally i would swap out the power supply, a faulty power supply
can do stupid things like this

and of course the last thing i really havent mentioned is the video
card, its possibly that this is the problem , but unlikely, i think
if u try all of the things i mentioned already you will figure out
which is the problem

i recommend that u pull every card u dont needd in order to pinpoint
the problem, thers no reason to have a sound card or network
cardinstalled when your tryin to figure this out, let me know how u
make out


sorry i couldnt give u an exact answer, but ive seen this problem
before with any of these as the solutions

==============
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[cryptz]

sorry i just saw that it wont even turn on now. Take all the cards out
accept the video card (if its not onboard) and reset the cmos
(consult the motherboard manual) if that doesnt get it booting again
box the shit up and send it back =)

==============
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[blackjack]

Are all of the PSU ramps within limits?

I built a computer with a friend the other day, I've built several
computers and they all came out just fine. This one however, gets
past all the booting and posting, you can sit in the bios all day and
its fine, but when you boot from the xp install it gets 1-3 minutes
into reading from the disk with that blue screen as its getting ready
to install. When it gets here it just shuts off, the power just cuts
off to the tower. I think the mobo may have a faulty power switch
mechanism, but I'm not sure. He is useing a western digital SATA
160GB hard drive, a gigabyte GA-IK1100 mobo and the 3.0E Prescott P4,
along with a gig of value select ram in dual channel, he has 2 cd
drives and a floppy as well, all the wiring has been checked and is
in order. The computer doesn't shut off in the bios though, so its
not time related, you can let it sit in the bios for 10 mins, reboot
and boot from xp cd and it'll crash in under 5 mins. Any help in this
matter would be greatly appriciated, if not I'm personally guessing
send back the mobo, as I had a similar issue to this once and sent
back the mobo and got a new on and I've never had it since.

Also, I've consulted the manual and found nothing of any real help for
this problem. The HDD is recognized as IDE 3 and it won't recognise
the second cdrom on the first IDE channel. So the 1st IDE channels
master is in place, a dvdrom, but the cd burner in 1st slave isn't
showing at all, and the HDD is showing in IDE3.

==============
Posted through www.HowToFixComputers.com/bb - free access to hardware

troubleshooting newsgroups.

 

[devicex]

Thanks cryptz for your input. Blackjack I'm not sure what you mean by
the PSU ramps or how to check them. Sorry the more knowledgable
friend of mine who started this thread is out of town.

I've disconnected all the drives, the only card installed was the vid
card and I got the same results. I've removed the power supply and it
will be checked sometime today to make sure it is working
appropriately.

In then future when I am going to install the drivers by hitting f6
for the SATA drive is it possible to install them off the cd rather
then a disk? All the drivers for the mobo are on cdrom.

All your help is greatly appriciated.

==============
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[devicex]

Alright, I swapped out the power supply for the old one in my gateway,
250w , and thr thing starts up fine. I got what I thought were sata
drivers off the web and put them on disk and did the f6 trick but it
does not like them and asks for a disk labeled "manufacturer-supplied
hardwear support disk" the problem being is I dont have this disk,
the hard drive didn't come with one and the mobo cd wont let me
access any of the files it contains because the computer I am trying
to use to copy the files from cd to 3.5 is not a gygabyte mobo
I'm lost.

==============
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[devicex]

Ummmm well I got the disks working as stated by gigabytes website but
it still will not work, windows says it will load the drivers and
gets to the point where you format the HD and tells me I dont have
one.....

==============
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[devicex]

Finally got it all figured out. At first the floppy drive wasnt
working correctly, fixed it and then could install drivers. Installed
drivers didn't do the trick either so on a whim I went into CMOS and
tried to see if there was any settings that could help. I ended up
changed the setting for serial port 0, under the integrated
peripherals, from auto to serial port 0, whatever that means.
Installed again and everything is a go, runs great no problems other
than only recognizing 130gb of the 160 gb drive but I'll deal with
that later. Now I have to find a power supply that is actually
suitable and I'm ready to roll. Thanks for your help everyone.
:wink:

==============
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[Tool]

Incase you were all wondering what was going on, devicex is correct,
it was his computer we were working on and I was out of town all
weekend so I just made a post at the top there detailing the problem
and he checked it and kept asking questions. I'm totally suprised
this got a decent bit of attention, and as a result I'm going to try
to help people solve all their problems on here too. This is good
practice, and while I do know how to solve alot of problems, that one
stumped me. Crazy random computer shut downs suck, they don't give
many leads if it gets past post. At any rate, thank you all for your
time, and I'll be around. 8)

==============
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[Erez Volach]

many leads if it gets past post. At any rate, thank you all for your
time, and I'll be around. 8)

<snip>
Crazy random computer shut downs suggestively points toward faulty /
insufficient PSU. (that would have been my first guess in your situation)
Procedure recommended for isolating such problems is put on bare essentials
(bear necessaties?) i.e. mobo, PSU, CPU + fan, single memory module, video
card. Boot - screen on ? check POST pregression. No screen ? swap vid card /
memory / CPU with known working one (POST beep codes can help here, if
audible). This puts minimum electrical load on PSU and provides minimum
points of failure to reduce complexity of testing. After it POSTs, go with
the error codes on screen. Once into BIOS, load default settings, check
hardware monitor section for temps and voltages. Once established bios
settings work (including CPU ratios, FSB and memory settings) shut down,
hook main HD as master on IDE 0, or first SATA, if you only have that, try
to autodetect. Add floppy if you have, check for detection. Add other add-on
cards, one by one, check for booting, POSTing, detection and VOLTAGES
(value, stability). Increasing the load on PSU increases the chances of
experiencing problems, if are PSU related.
Each stage can suggest different points of failure, so it is better to
isolate as much as possible, than troubleshooting a whole system. If, for
example, there are difficulties in booting or POSTing, and vid card and CPU
are known to work in similar other system, you may suspect memory. Swapping
memory among modules or slots can help findproblems in that department. It
might be helpfull at this stage to add a floppy and load memtest86 to run
tests on memoy system.