A couple of funnies

[rkoenn]

First one is I have been attempting to install Win XP on my sons system which we just changed out the motherboard on. The new motherboard is a shuttle AK31 (Via KT266A) with 512 MB DDR, Athlon XP 1700+, SB Live, Radeon 8500, 3COM Ethernet, Pioneer DVD, and Maxtor 60GB HDD. During the install as windows is attempting to load the setup files on the hard drive, the system constantly locks up at about the 50% point. I tried another new hard drive and setting BIOS settings to safe mode but still does the same thing. And it always occurs at 49-50% of the load. Not even on the same file. I even tried another WinXP CD to no avail. I did not put in another CD drive but will try that tonight, but I don't understand why I wouldn't get a read error if that was the cause. One thing that does happen at lockup is the hard drive access light stays on until a hard reboot, and it requires a hard reboot, does not respond to CNTL-ALT-DEL. If it does not turn out to be the CD drive, I can only assume it is the motherboard. Anyone have a good idea of the problem or ever have a similar problem? All ideas can be thrown at me.

Second one is a system I am working on for a guy. It is a P3 with a Via based motherboard. He recently put in a new Maxtor 40GB HDD. I spent some time on it a week ago and got it working again although it was a bit difficult. Thought the problem was his RAM at the time. He took it and used it for 3 or so days and then it got corrupted again. I now think it is the hard drive. When I run Maxtor diagnostics on it, during the diagnostics startup it says the memory buffer R/W check is faulty. His drive is totally scrambled now and actually reports as 5 GB drive. I cannot find any files listed on it and also, the model number, serial number, etc. burned in to the ROM do not match the real parameters. Sounds like a bad drive to me. Again, information from anyone with more experience with something like this is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.