2000 Pro Install problem: driver FUBARed

[niall]

Okay, I think I managed to do this completely the wrong way. My local friends who could help me are not available currently. A search through Microsoft's KB and AT's forums didn't yield precise information, so I turn to the forumers at large. mechBgon, heeeeelp!

WARNING: This is long, but hey, you guys need ALL the details, yes? And it did take me all week to get to this point... I don't know where I went wrong, but I possibly did so at many points along the way.

After I finally outlived Win98SE (oh, hush, it served me well for 6 years), and partly because I just couldn't make it work on my "new" motherboard (that old nVidia compatibility problem), I had a friend give me his old Win2000Pro CD, with ServicePack 3 installed already. While I had a stable system, I downloaded as many of the appropriate bios, drivers, and software installation files as I could.

I even bought brand new hard drives to have a clean install. And so I could have more space. 80GB seems so small these days... and I remember being in San Jose when the 1GB drive came out to a chorus of Ooohs and Ahhhs...

Hardware:
- Abit NF7-S2 board (I just couldn't find the -S v.2), with nVidia nForce2 chipset
- AMD 2500+ Barton CPU running at 400FSB
- 512MB AzenRam 3200 stick (bought ~6 months ago)
- 512MB Elixir ram 3200 stick (slot next to azenram) (boought a while ago)
- Maxtor 80GB IDE drive (IDE 1 lone) (2 partitions of 40 gigs each)
- Maxtor 200GB SATA drive (SATA 1) (2 partitions, 57GB and the rest)
- ASUS GeForce 4 TI4800SE VIVO video card (bought 6 months ago, "used" but was never actually opened)
- old LG CD-RW drive (IDE 2 master)
- old Zip drive (IDE2 slave)
- SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit card (new)
- DLink Ethernet controller card (early try of 98 showed the onboard lan had... issues)
- old diskette drive, which 2000 can't see (more on that at the end)

Upon my first try at this, I foolishly tried to download Service Pack 4 without anything to protect me, after installing the video drivers. I got hosed. BSOD through which I couldn't go. That came from installing SpyBot before things like messenger programs, and every time something wanted to change the registry, SB would give me a warning popup box, except that I couldn't say "yes, change it" anywhere - in fact, the text over the rightmost button (for no) was not visible, and all I could do eventually was deny the registry change. That's when I got the BSOD at the next reboot, past which I couldn't go.

Eventually I managed to get past that and find a way to reformat the C: drive. Started from scratch. Or so I thought.

After I reformatted and reinstalled, booting gave me TWO Windows 2000 choices. I kept choosing the first to install everything. And every time, after I press enter, there's a 30 seconds of blank screen before the "loading windows 2000" screen comes up with the dashed white line at the bottom filling up.

So here's what I installed, in the order that I did:
- Asus video drivers, to get out of VGA mode and see stuff
- ethernet driver
- a few programs
- MotherBoardMonitor
- audio card drivers from the CD
- Asus enhanced drivers
- 14 more programs
- ZoneAlarm
- ISP program
- Tried to install SP4, from the downloaded stub that starts the procedure. I chose to backup files, and it rebooted mysteriously while in the middle of things.
- DirectX9.0c
- tried SP4 again; it seemed to finish, but then did a hard reboot at the end and still came up as SP3.
- um, THEN I installed the nForce drivers, as I realised I hadn't before... aheh.
- 3 more programs
- downloaded IE6.0 as I wasn't getting anywhere without it for more programs
- 6 more programs, ending with AIM 5.5 (from oldversion.com)
- Rebooted suddenly (again), then automatically tried to update the Java console, and rebooted in the middle of that

This is where I noticed that programs like Firefox or Skype would suddenly close themselves, vanishing in a puff of smoke, and I wasn't always able to restart them. And more sudden reboots out of nowhere, or else when clicking to open a program, or when clicking to close a program.

- put in HiJackThis, but nothing on there that shouldn't be there
- Put in SiSoftware Sandra (my 50th software/driver install)
- After being told that SP4 not being there may have been one reason my system was "more unstable than 98 first edition" as someone put it, I retried to download SP4. Once again I went the usual way and had it save files. That's when I actually noticed that it gave me a brief error that it had run out of space, and was going to terminate installation, then rebooted itself. I went to sleep.
- This morning, I tried again but did NOT ask it to save files for uninstallation. It went flawlessly, installed everything, and asked me to reboot, which I did, and it loaded fine.
- And five seconds later, rebooted by itself. AUGH.

I had tried to install the driver file (from drivers.com) for my particular monitor (Compaq v710), to get out of 60Hz that my basic "plug and play monitor" setting gives me. I had no problem in 98, but here it refused to see or install the v710 monitor. Hmm, I told myself, maybe it's because I still have a few drivers to install from the ASUS video card site, like the "personal VCR" and "WDM Capture drivers" so I could use the VIVO segment of the card, which is one reason I bought the card in the first place. So...

- Installed the WDM capture driver. It installed, rebooted properly, and upon 2000 loading, started recognising new hardware and installing drivers for it****-- and rebooted AGAIN right in the middle of it.

And now, I get this BSOD:

"STOP: c000026c (Unable to Load Device Driver)
\SystemRoot\system32\drivers\STREAM.SYS device driver could not be loaded."

Upon looking, it's a WDM file, so it makes sense that I'd get this if the above last step was interrupted.

One of the ways to counter this problem is listed as booting from an Emergency Rescue Diskette. Major problem: my diskette drive is not working right. I can do a "Dir a:" command from the Repair Console, and it will light up the disk drive light, take a very long time, and tell me that there's a problem. From Windows itself, it gave me a "disk not formatted" error, while I know the disk has stuff on it. The cable seems to be properly put in and everything. So that avenue seems closed to me for an unknown reason.

So, did I mess things up by doing the worst order of things possible? Will I have to reformat again and start from scratch? Is there a way to have the SP4 put on somewhere without having to get online and deal directly from the Microsoft site? (I haven't found a way to do that 'securely', the way it seems possible with SP2 for XP).

...help?

Thank you.

 

[mechBgon]

First, the OS stuff. Even with SP4 installed, Win2000 should still not be let out onto the Internet without a firewall, or you're going down in flames regardless. What I would do, is to pre-download these resources and burn them to a CD, using a secure broadband-equipped system:

• the entire 129MB Service Pack 4 installer (click SP4 Network Installation
• Update Rollup 1 for Win2000SP4, which bundles a fair number of post-SP4 updates into one shot
• free ZoneAlarm
• the entire DirectX9.0C installer
• Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2
• free 30-day trial of Kaspersky Antivirus Personal 5
• nVidia 4.27 Unified Driver Package for nF2
• nVidia 81.98 video drivers

Now remove all drives from your system except for the drive you intend to install on, and one optical drive. Also, get rid of that PCI NIC, your onboard NIC will be ok under Win2000. And remove the SoundBlaster Live! too.

0) make sure your system's network cable is unplugged.

1) start Windows Setup from CD. When it gets to where it shows all the partitions on the drive, delete all of them, then press F3 twice to EXIT Windows Setup.

2) now start Windows Setup from CD and this time carry on with it. Give the Administrator account a STRONG password such as niall@AnandTech, do not leave it blank!

3) when it reaches the Desktop screen, yeah, it's going to be ugly 16-color VGA. Do not succumb to the urge to install your video drivers early.

4) install Service Pack 4 and reboot.

5) install DirectX 9.0C and reboot.

6) install the Update Rollup 1 and reboot.

7) take a snack break! Then go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy, and in the LSP panel go down to Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options. The top item needs set to No Access Without Explicit Anonymous Permissions.

8) install your nVidia 4.27 UDP and reboot. If offered the Network Access Manager/nVidia Firewall option, say no to that, and I'd say no to the SW IDE driver too.

9) go into Device Manager, expand the IDE Controllers, and enable DMA mode on whichever controller your optical drive is on, then reboot.

10) install your video drivers and reboot

11) install ZoneAlarm and reboot.

12) plug in your network cable and do an ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew to get an IP address (Start > Run > cmd for a command prompt, then run those commands)

13) install the Kaspersky Antivirus trialware and update it, then reboot.

14) Configure Kaspersky as shown on this page.

15) Go to Control Panel > Automagic Updates and enable the full-auto update mode.

16) Drag the system through Windows Update about four times to get IE6 SP1, WMP9 and various patches that will be needed by them once they're installed.

17) Install Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer 2 and run it to see what else needs attention.



And if you are a real mechBgon disciple, you will now right-click My Computer, choose Manage, go down to Local Users & Groups > Users, go into the Users group and make a new user account in that group (the Restricted Users group) to be your daily driver account, so you're basically immune to spyware/adware and a lot of viruses too. Use the Administrator account only when you actually need that level of power.

After all of that, now you can shut down and put your additional drives in. If you are using the SATA drive as the boot drive, then don't be surprised if you have to manually go back into the BIOS and put it back on top of the priority list after there are PATA alternatives for the mobo to choose from. They tend to do that. If the system is trying to boot from a PATA drive, you might see that silly double-listing of Win2000's to choose from until you fix the boot-drive priority in the BIOS.

Hardware-wise, the S2 is known for its lack of BIOS voltage adjustments. Some RAM wants more voltage than the mobo might be defaulting to, at which point you basically need to use RAM that jives with what the mobo's going to supply. And (duh) without voltage tweaks, your Barton may not be able to do the 400MHz FSB dance. So start by (1) clocking the CPU at stock speed, and (2) forcing the RAM to operate at 166MHz / DDR333 so it's synced with the CPU's FSB.

If problems persist, then 1) what is your power supply? and 2) try some Memtest86 overnight. Then try with just one memory module at a time. If you have some actual genuine PC2700 that is made for 2.5 volt operation, then certainly try that instead of your PC3200, which may be looking for 2.6V or more.

Frankly I would leave the SB Live! out of the system, but if you want to try it, then put it in PCI slot 2, 3, or 4.


Hope that helps

 

[niall]

Thanks for the hints! There were many things I didn't quite know about 2k. And about the Microsoft site - such as the full offsite files for SP4 and DX9...

I tried this morning, and it seems stable, though a few things didn't quite go according to plan; specifically, step 12 hit a snag when I did a ipconfig command and got - nothing. Doing your commands gave me the error "Error: No adaptors bound to TCP/IP are enabled for DHCP". Aka it didn't see the cable plugged in. This is similar to what I was getting when in 98; it's possible the Lan connection on the motherboard is not working. This is why I got the NIC card.

So I shut down, put in the card, and loaded the drivers. Going back and trying to run the command giva me the desired result - but trying to load the ISP program to connect to the net gave me an error: "Error E0051: Failed to load Tap". Doing an "ipconfig" gave me a strange result: "Ethernet adapter Local Area Network 2: Media State...Cable disconnected" then "Ethernet adapter Local Area Network: a bunch of IP addresses." Still that No Tap error.

Also, since you said not to use my soundblaster, I enabled the onboard audio, and that got me a bunch of new hardware for which it couldn't find drivers.

So I'll keep the NIC (slot 5) and the soundblaster (slot 3), and load up arrpopriate drivers when necessary. It worked before. I've restarted from scratch, but brought my FSB to 266.

Other question: after installing Zone Alarm, it tried to contact all kinds of addresses, despite not being on the net. Should I always approve those for things like services.exe?

Also, you said that the S2 is "known for its lack of BIOS voltage adjustments"? Well, I don't know about mine, but I can see the following adjustments that I can do:
- DDR SDRAM Voltage, from 2.50V to 2.95V (default 2.60V)
- LDT Voltage whatever that is, 1.6V (default) and up
- AGP voltage, 1.55V to 1.65V (1.60V default)

My memory timings can range from 8-3-3-3.0 to 7-2-2-3.0 that my BIOS permits.

My power supply is what came with my AMB3700 case: Antec 350W model SL350, +5V (35A), +12V (16A), +3.3V (28A), -5V (0.5A), -12V (0.8A), +5V SB (2.0A).

The SATA drive is secondary drive, the IDE is the boot, so that clears one potential headache.

I didn't need a CD, I put all the files and installers on a tidy 1gb usb drive and transferred it to the hard drive once 2000 has been installed. Works great.

I'll let you know if it works! Once I get the right sequence down...

 

[mechBgon]

1) Who's your ISP and what sort of connection is it (cable, DSL, dial-up, etc)?

2) What exactly does your computer plug into, network-wise? Brand & model would be good.

3) Glad to hear they got the memory voltage adjustments into the S2's

4) Certain stuff would try to connect to the Internet, like the automatic Windows Update checker, Kaspersky or other antivirus software trying to get updates, etc.

 

[niall]

Hokay! I think I have isolated the problem.

I restarted from scratch again, making sure to turn off the integrated LAN and Audio in the BIOS. Once everything works fine, and I'll have Norton Ghost again and will have backed up an image of a perfectly working C drive and registry, I'll check what voltages are needed for the "400 fsb dance" (I like the term) and go ahead. 333 until then.

At least your method, coupled with my usb stick, means it takes less than three hours to go through the basics. This time everything was on track, the unknown drivers in Device Manager were being whittled away as I installed the missing elements (video, ethernet, USB, audio) from outside sources. I got to the ipconfig and it worked, though it gave back the exact same settings it had originally.

For reference, when putting in the 4.27 drivers, I checked the GART, Memory controller and SMBus drivers, and UNchecked Ethernet, IDE and Audio drivers.

I had to put in two extra steps:

11.5 - After installing Zone Alarm, and before I could do the ipconfig, I had to have a working ethernet, so I installed the NIC card's updated ethernet driver. Then step 12 worked fine.

15.5 - In order to go through step 16 and connect to Windows, I figured I had better install the ISP's own connection software, ne? So I did, and it installed its P.P.P.o.E. drivers. Rebooted. Then I tried to configure a connection profile for my ISP - and BANG, that pesky "E00051 - Failed to load Tap" arrived again.

So I had a check in CMD and ipconfig, and got the same result as described in my previous message. So I had a check in Device Manager, and lo, I had indeed TWO Network Adapters:

- D-Link DFE-530TX PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter (rev. C)
- Efficient Networks Enternet P.P.P.o.E. Adapter

Going into Network and Dial-Up Connections, I get:

- Local Area Connection - LAN - Enabled - D-Link etc.
- Local Area Connection 2 - LAN - Network cable unplugged - Efficient Networks etc.

So the question now is, how do I make my Enternet program use the D-link connection? Well, a quick search (now that I'm at work and CAN search - I had only sporadic access to friends' connections during the weekend) show me that I may simply need to change the filter driver to protocol driver in Settings - Advanced. So I'll try that tonight.

I'll point out that this was my fourth try to get my system working. My first two tries, described in my opening post, had zero problems installing my ISP profile and connecting to the net. So either one of the steps you had me do is stopping this, or something extra I did before managed to make it work. And for the record, those first two tries also had the Ethernet drivers unchecked in the 4.27 driver install.

This is my ISP and I connect through a DSL modem. As for the modem itself, it's a Chinese thing without an actual model on it; I forget the brand right now. (It's no longer the model shown on the ISP's website.) I'll also note that Friday night, I was properly connected to the net, used browsers, telnet and even Skype, albeit intermittently; it might have simply been the 400 fsb bad voltages that gave me the reboots, now that I think about it... aheh.

At least I'll have better knowledge of things to look for. Yeahyeahyeah, I'm always years behind the curve. Nothing new there.

I'll try that possible fix tonight. That's the problem with only one net connection at home - it takes forever to search and fix problems when my friends upstairs aren't home...

 

[niall]

Yup, that was the problem - fixed things to a protocol driver, erased my connection profile, remade it, and it found the lan connection and got me online.

Yay!

Got all the updates and everything after that, and now I'm cautiously installing the rest of my 30-odd programs.

On the issue of your Point 17: I tried creating another user, but couldn't find "restricted users" as an option, and trying to log on to that had a new desktop without all the software already installed on it that I could use, only some. For example, the icon to connect with Enternet was gone. Is that normal?