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Flaky Windows XP install - what to troubleshoot next?

B

Booty

Senior member
Doing an upgrade (clean install) on a PC - going from 98 to XP. At one point in the installation, got a stop error, but on reboot installation continued without any further problems. I'm not sure whether it went into Windows on the first boot after installation was complete or not (there were 2 of us doing the installation... whoever first noticed it was at a point that it needed input took care of it), but shortly after it began rebooting at the black screen w/ the Windows logo and little blue scrolling bar (not sure what the actual term is for that screen/point in the boot process).

Anyway, about 1 second into that screen it would reboot, eventually come up with the option to go to safe mode, last known good config, etc. Safe mode worked no problem, safe mode w/ networking and all the others had the reboot issue. I messed around in the BIOS, changed some things, restored defaults, etc... nothing seemed to make a difference. Then, kinda out of nowhere, it boots and all is well.

So I do some Windows updates... restarts fine. I install Office 2003. Back to the reboot problem. Called it a night. This morning, turned it on, nothing at first (thought I heard the hard drive clicking)... rebooted, got a corrupt file error, rebooted w/ XP CD in to repair the installation, but didn't get the chance to change the BIOS to boot from the CD, and Windows ended up booting fine.

SO..... (sorry for the length) - I do some more Windows Updates - get the rebooting problem again. I just let it go (since it tries to boot after 30 seconds) and after hearing it reboot a half dozen times or so, I turn around to see it's made it to the logon screen. I go to do the DX9 update and it fails... then ie crashes.

So at this point I'm thinking it has to do with either the harddrive controller (motherboard), the hard drive itself, the memory itself, or some other part of the motherboard. The mobo is an Intel CA810E - it's hard to tell the source of the system, since it has about 3 different stickers with service numbers on it. In any case, it's a P3 800 w/ 128 megs of ram.

Some other (possibly related) information - since we were upgrading this thing to XP, we ordered some more ram... 2 standard Crucial PC133 256 MB dimms from Newegg. I tried all kinds of different combinations with one or two sticks of ram, combining the old ram with the new, just using the new, etc... in the end, none of the new ram worked *properly* in the machine. It might show up as 16 megs, etc... so we ordered another stick straight from Crucial using their site to specify the motherboard model. It should come in today, so it'll be interesting to see if it works. What's weird is the ram that's in there is 32x64, as was the new ram... both were double-sided, and from what I've read, this motherboard should be fine with a 256 meg stick. I always thought Intel motherboards were some of the most stable you could buy, but this one sure seems to be a bit flaky.

So, again, sorry for the length, but does anyone have suggestions as to what our next move should be? I'm currently running Doc Memory on it from SimmTester.com - is there another memory-stress test I can try (preferably one that doesn't need you to boot into Windows and that's free, but any suggestion is welcome). How about something to check the integrity of the hard drive controller? I'm going to run WD's diagnostics on the drive itself shortly... I'll post back with an update.

Damn I talk (type) too much...
 
Run the full diagnostic on the hard drive from the manuf to test it out. As for the ram issue, I would also update it to the latest bios. I know at dell we had to flash to the latest bios all the time to get new memory working. Also, you have to remove the power cord when switching ram.
 
check out memtest.org for a great memory testing tool.. boots from a floppy

also.. I would definitely say your mobo isn't playing nice with your RAM.. i have had many similar problems with XP installs that boiled down to either bad RAM chips, or mobo that didn't like a particular RAM chip..

the only way to be assured of memory compatibility is to get a list of approved tested modules from the mobo manufacturer.. not always necessary, but if you are having problems, it couldn't hurt.

One other thing that may help is to do either a repair or full re-install with the new memory chip you ordered. Bad RAM can screw up files when installing and create an unstable install image, which is awfully hard deal with other than with a reinstall.

If you are running XP Pro, there is a command utility to verify the integrity of the system files. I believe it's SFC at command prompt. there are flags you want to check out and I don't remember them off the top of my head, so try SFC /? first 🙂
 
Grabbin' that memory tester now... I had already started running the other test, which passed, as well as the WD Diagnostics, which also passed. The new memory should work since we went through Crucial and specified the exact model of the motherboard... I would think the old memory wouldn't cause problems since the system had been running for a while (a couple years, to my knowledge), but maybe the problems just weren't brought to the surface until we went from 98 to XP.

After the system had passed the memory and hard drive tests, I went ahead and did a repair install over the old one, which resolved the issues (temporarily). I went through doing some Windows updates, and all was well through a couple rounds of them, but after about the 3rd round back came the reboots - which, to reiterate, don't happen in XP itself, but during the booting process.

Anyway, going to run memtest and see if it sees any problems. I definately agree that it seems like a memory/mobo issue, especially after seeing how finicky the system was when trying to add generic crucial memory to it (ram that worked fine in 3 other machines we tested it in, I might add). If I can just track down a pattern to make it boot then I can at least get this system back to them with the warning, "Hey, it's flaky, and you should really consider replacing it as soon as you have the money to." I don't think the system's worth trying to track down a replacement socket 370 motherboard, so I'm really hoping the new ram gives us some stability.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions... I'll post back with any updates.

 
another thing to try to troubleshoot boot problems..

download and use Microsoft Bootvis. This utility is free from the MS website, and will generate a log and nice graphs of the load times and load status of your device drivers etc.. at boot. It can be really helpful if you happen to have a particular file that is causing the boot problems.

You can try booting with the "logged" option first, but bootvis is perty cool.. Also, it will do additional defrag on the boot files, which can make a HUGE difference in total boot time (sometimes reduces it by almost 50%)
 
Great tip AEnigmaWI - I went ahead and found BootVis - hasn't really come into play yet, but a good tool to know about and possess.

At this point, I removed a modem that is no longer in use in the machine and also disconnected an old Travan tape drive that won't be used... might as well simplify things as much as possible. Memtest86+ ran without complaints. I went ahead and flashed to the latest BIOS as well.

It really seems like the reboot issue crops up when software is installed/updated/changed. Not sure what to think about it, really. I got Quickbooks installed and all the Office/Windows updates taken care of and at this point it's booting, so hopefully it continues to work... who knows. Anyway, thanks for the feedback guys. For now I'm hoping the system will be fine as long as nothing drastic is changed.
 
Microsoft (believe it or not) has an excellent RAM tester here :http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp. It helped me located a bad DIMM slot on my motherboard. (No matter what combination of DIMMS I used, DIMM slot B was always coming up bad. I stopped putting RAM in that slot.)

Turn off autoreboot (system control panel, advanced, startup and recovery) and post the STOP codes that you're getting here.

Go to your system event log and filter on source Save Dump and post the STOP codes taht you were getting here.
 
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