Diagnosing Hardware

[thanser]

I'm getting errors when installing Windows 2K on an Asus PIII board, Celeron 700 mhz CPU, and two 128 MB RAM sticks.

"Can not copy file 'filename.dll' - Retry, Skip, Abort" is the typical error message when running the installer. Later, the system hangs during the installation alltogether.

I've had this box for quite a while now, and it has served me well.

Everthing else is new - the HD, case, and CD-ROM drive. That leaves only the MB, the CPU (a replacement, actually, from Computergeeks.com), and the two RAM sticks.

How do I go about isolating this problem, before I pitch the whole mess? Maybe I can salvage the RAM?

Thanks!

 

[amdskip]

Possible problems: IDE channel is bad, ram is bad, power supply is bad, IDE cable is bad.

First thing I would try is hooking up the cdrom to a different ide channel even if it is on the same channel as the hard drive.

 

[thanser]

Thanks!

I'll switch out the IDE cable(s) first. If that's not it, how about putting an IDE controller card in, and not using the onboard controller (marked primary and secondary)?

Or, removing one RAM stick at a time, or swapping them in their slots? How do I isolate a RAM problem?

Yeah, I downloaded Fedora the other day, too.

 

[JK949]

Is the hard drive brand new / never had an os on it ?
If it has there might be something left on it that is causeing the problem.
Try running dos fdisk on it to make sure it's completly blank.
I've run into the same problem once on my backup computer.
After fdisk it loaded just fine. if the drive is brand new it might be your cd drive
having trouble reading the disc.

 

[Smilin]

Air blast out your CDRom, try a new disc.
Double check cabling.
Go down to a single stick of ram and/or run a memory diagnostic.
Shuffle IDE controllers (don't use cable select, set it by hand.)
Check for a BIOS updated for that Asus.

 

[Ford442]

you do know about the whole 'reset your bios to deafults' thing right?
it may apply to you - it happened when i was trying to upgrade to XP - the installer REALLY wants you to have your BIOS at all default settings durring install..

 

[gsaldivar]

Try a different HD.