Driver

[GtownBobbo]

How do you take drivers from the cd that comes with the motherboard, and update the drivers on the motherboard before you load an operating system...is it possible? My windows setup keeps locking up.

 

[airfoil]

Nope, cannot be done. Assuming you're using WinXP, what you can do is slipstream the XP Service Pack onto your XP files and burn a new CD. I doubt that will solve your problem though.

At which stage does your installation hang up?

 

[GtownBobbo]

Well the computer loads up normal, and checks everything...then it loads up the cd drive..and then the blue windows setup screen comes up....and it loads a bunch of things..then it says setup is starting windows..and thats where it locks up. any ideas?

 

[airfoil]

Sounds like a possible hardware configuration issue.

Need a list of all the Hardware on that rig, including where you have which Hard/Optical drive connected.

For example:

Primary IDE Master: Seagate xx (jumper set to master)
Primary IDE Slave: No drive
Secondary IDE Master: NEC 35xx DVD (jumper set to master)
Secondary IDE Slave: No drive

SATA 1: Seagate xx
SATA 2: no drive

 

[GtownBobbo]

Ok

Motherboard: Asus AV7600-X
Memory: Kingston 256MB
Video Card: G-Force 2
Floppy-Hi Val Basic Floppy
Power Supply: Antec 350 Watt
Primary IDE Master: Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm 8mb buffer (jumper set to CS Enabled)
Primary IDE Slave: No Drive
Secondary IDE Master: 24-48x CD-Rom drive by LG (jumper set to pins closest to IDE cable) --put a new drive on at MA - no diff
Secondary IDE Slave: No Drive

 

[airfoil]

Can you try with the floppy drive disconnected (not needed) and also perform a clean install by deleting partitions on that HDD, creating new ones and formatting them?

--put a new drive on at MA - no diff

Dont understand what that means!

 

[GtownBobbo]

this computer was just put together yesterday..and i keep gettin this error. There were never partitions on this HDD. I am still just trying to get out of BIOS

 

[airfoil]

Ok, you need to boot off the XP CD and get to the point where it detects the HDDs and asks you where you want to install the OS to - this leads to creating a partition and formatting it next. Have you even gotten to this stage as yet?

 

[GtownBobbo]

Nope, it gets to the point right before there, then it freezes

 

[airfoil]

Can you try changing out the IDE cables?

 

[GtownBobbo]

Yeah I already have switched out the IDE cables, 3 times, in fact.

 

[airfoil]

Something keeps telling me this is a problem with the HDD. Can you set the jumper to master and try again?

 

[GtownBobbo]

its on master...i tried again...still freezes on "Setup is starting Windows"

 

[airfoil]

Ok, lets try this.

Download the Maxtor Maxblast HDD installation utility and use it to partition/format your HDD.

If this completes successfully, then go on to the XP installation to see if the hang-up continues.