This is a long post - trying to provide as much detail as possible.
I just built two boxes as follows - both were meant to be extreme VALUE configurations:
Asus M2N-MX mobo, AMD A64 3000+, Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 (2x512), Western Digital 320GB 7200rpm (16mb buffer / Sata 3 Gb/s), LiteOn DVD Burner
Box 1 has the above plus a 550 Watt power supply and an additional IDE HD (WD 250GB 7200RPM 8mb buffer).
Box 2 has the above plus 430 Watt power supply and an additional LiteOn CD player (not burner)
Box 1:
After hardware was assembled, I installed XP PRO on the 250 Gb IDE disk. I then loaded the drivers from my mobo disk. Next I went to WindowsUpdate and installed a lot of security patches and updates, had to reboot, then installed SP2. As soon as I would reboot after installing SP2, box would continuously reboot and leave you at screen indicating "Press F1 to retry ...".
I retried the install multiple times and finally found that if I installed XP first, then just the ethernet driver from mobo disk, and then installed all updates (including SP2) at WindowsUpdate, the box would build successfully and was stable. I then unhooked the 250 Gb IDE disk and hooked up 320 GB SATA disk and followed same procedure as in previous sentence. Box built successfully and was stable.
BIOS allows me to choose which drive to boot from, so I hooked both drives up and selected the 320 GB Sata - box booted up and was stable, but 250 Gb IDE drive was not shown in Disk Mgmt. I checked Device Mgr and both disks showed as operating normally. I checked system logs and found errors indicating that the 250 Gb disk had a bad superblock.
I unhooked the 320 Sata drive, rebooted with the 250 Gb IDE drive. Windows booted normally. I ran Chkdsk on all partitions and everything checked out fine.
Box 2:
After hardware was assembled, I installed using XP PRO disc that included SP1 on the 320 Gb Sata disk. I then loaded just the ethernet driver from my mobo disk (trying to do what worked from experience with Box 1). As soon as I rebooted after installing ethernet driver from mobo disc box came to blinking cursor with error NTLDR not found. I booted back up using install disc and tried to Repair using recovery console. Box then Blue Screened.
My questions are:
1) should I troubleshoot further or simply conclude that the M2N-MX is a bad Mobo (rare in my experience from Asus) and exchange for different ones?
2) if troubleshoot ... where to start? BIOS update? Hardware compatibility?
3) I read one post on this mobo saying it had a really unusual voltage requirement for RAM. Has anyone got more info on this?
4) I feel that I can eliminate power supply issues from consideration since I'm having similar issues on both boxes and they each have different power supplies. Does this seem reasonable?
5) As stated above, hard drives on Box 1 are recognized with no problems in BIOS, and Device Manager. The 250GB just does not show up in Disk Mgmt when booting from the 320 Gb disk. Does this imply a problem with the IDE / SATA not playing nicely???? Of course Box 2 does not have an IDE drive and is still having similar issues.
Need help and advice ... Thanks.
I just built two boxes as follows - both were meant to be extreme VALUE configurations:
Asus M2N-MX mobo, AMD A64 3000+, Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 (2x512), Western Digital 320GB 7200rpm (16mb buffer / Sata 3 Gb/s), LiteOn DVD Burner
Box 1 has the above plus a 550 Watt power supply and an additional IDE HD (WD 250GB 7200RPM 8mb buffer).
Box 2 has the above plus 430 Watt power supply and an additional LiteOn CD player (not burner)
Box 1:
After hardware was assembled, I installed XP PRO on the 250 Gb IDE disk. I then loaded the drivers from my mobo disk. Next I went to WindowsUpdate and installed a lot of security patches and updates, had to reboot, then installed SP2. As soon as I would reboot after installing SP2, box would continuously reboot and leave you at screen indicating "Press F1 to retry ...".
I retried the install multiple times and finally found that if I installed XP first, then just the ethernet driver from mobo disk, and then installed all updates (including SP2) at WindowsUpdate, the box would build successfully and was stable. I then unhooked the 250 Gb IDE disk and hooked up 320 GB SATA disk and followed same procedure as in previous sentence. Box built successfully and was stable.
BIOS allows me to choose which drive to boot from, so I hooked both drives up and selected the 320 GB Sata - box booted up and was stable, but 250 Gb IDE drive was not shown in Disk Mgmt. I checked Device Mgr and both disks showed as operating normally. I checked system logs and found errors indicating that the 250 Gb disk had a bad superblock.
I unhooked the 320 Sata drive, rebooted with the 250 Gb IDE drive. Windows booted normally. I ran Chkdsk on all partitions and everything checked out fine.
Box 2:
After hardware was assembled, I installed using XP PRO disc that included SP1 on the 320 Gb Sata disk. I then loaded just the ethernet driver from my mobo disk (trying to do what worked from experience with Box 1). As soon as I rebooted after installing ethernet driver from mobo disc box came to blinking cursor with error NTLDR not found. I booted back up using install disc and tried to Repair using recovery console. Box then Blue Screened.
My questions are:
1) should I troubleshoot further or simply conclude that the M2N-MX is a bad Mobo (rare in my experience from Asus) and exchange for different ones?
2) if troubleshoot ... where to start? BIOS update? Hardware compatibility?
3) I read one post on this mobo saying it had a really unusual voltage requirement for RAM. Has anyone got more info on this?
4) I feel that I can eliminate power supply issues from consideration since I'm having similar issues on both boxes and they each have different power supplies. Does this seem reasonable?
5) As stated above, hard drives on Box 1 are recognized with no problems in BIOS, and Device Manager. The 250GB just does not show up in Disk Mgmt when booting from the 320 Gb disk. Does this imply a problem with the IDE / SATA not playing nicely???? Of course Box 2 does not have an IDE drive and is still having similar issues.
Need help and advice ... Thanks.
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