GA-P35-DS3L - XP Pro/SP2 Install Hangs - Help

[Bob151]

Bios F7, E4300, 4GB of HP PC5300 sticks, Antec Sonata III (earthwatts 500), GF PCI-X 7300 (no PCI-X power adapter needed, must be a liteweight card), HD is ST SATA 7200.10 250GB, SATA Samsung DVD.

I see nothing bleeding edge about this hardware setup.

AHCI Mode Disabled (default)
SATA Port 0-1 Native Mode Disabled (I think that is default)

I have performed a "Load Fail-Safe Defaults" numerous times. I only change BIOS to boot to cd-rom before HD.

XP always hangs, dvd spins down, screen blank for 10 minutes before I patiently give up hope.

CentOS 5.1 was already installed on the HD and the system boots to it, and I think it only has a XEN kernel installed. Only the NIC doesn't work, I think that is kind of expected considering it was installed on other hardware. This system will boot to the CentOS DVD and an Ubuntu Desktop 7.10 CD without problems. I booted to the Ubuntu CD, it has that LIVE thing going and used numerous large apps, like OpenOffice, I browsed the Internet, no problems.

XP always hangs right after the "setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration." The CD is in pristine shape, I stays in that large envelope that MS supplies with it. It rarely even gets used. This is retail, not OEM.

I ran memtest from the Ubuntu CD for about an hour, it encountered no errors. Yea it didn't finish. It start it before bed.

From the Bios, the CPU has never been over 34c AFAIK, Intel stock cooler until I acquire better.

This is my first Gigabyte MB, is there something special I need to do here?

 

[Bob151]

Alright, I've tried an external USB DVD drive to boot from and disconnected the SATA DVD, exact same problem.

I pulled an old IDE lite-on CD and plugged it in and kept SATA DVD disconnected, exact same problem.

I've tried my XP Home CD, exact same problem.

Still no overclocking, just a couple of times doing the fail-safe bios resets or whatever they are called.

Maybe the answer is right in front of me, but can someone let me in on it, please?

 

[hclarkjr]

try removing 2gb of memory and see if that fixes it

 

[Bob151]

Thanks for the reply. Yea, I tried that last night, forgot to mention.

In fact, for more than 19 hours Memtest +86 has been running on the latest installed 2GB pair for 35 cycles and no errors.

My board is Rev 2.0 BTW.

The later BIOSes I find on Gigabyte's web site are classified as beta. It appears that F7 is the latest non-beta.

This is really disappointing, I have never had this kind of trouble getting a new build to work with Windows since NT 4.0. I selected this board because it was so highly rated at newegg, I purchased from newegg.

Well, I read somewhere on the net that this board had trouble with installing XP and Vista to SATA drives. I unplugged the HD, Seagate ST3250310AS, and the blue install screen final had shown up. I just have never had a problem with Seagate, nor this kind of trouble with compatibility in this decade.

Two flavors of Linux, Ubuntu 7.10 and CentOS 5.1 have no problem with recognizing the HD, partitioning it, formatting it and installing files to it. I don't yet own Vista.

 

[Bob151]

Can XP install to Seagate SATA drives on this systemboard.

hclarkjr, I see that you have a WD, but I haven't owned a WD that didn't fail before it became too small. So, I just don't want to go with that if I can help it.

I hope someone can tell me before I get another SATA drive (likely from newegg).

 

[hclarkjr]

another thought i have is have you tried wiping the drive clean then just installing XP?

 

[hclarkjr]

i too have the revision 2 board and just read in the manual that this is your problem - SATA Port 0-1 Native Mode Disabled (I think that is default) the manual reads that this should be enabled for XP.

 

[hclarkjr]

here is the what it says right from the manaul - enabled, allows the SATA controllers to operate in native IDE mode. enable native IDE mode if you wish to install operating systems that support native mode. e.g. windows xp / 2000

 

[owensdj]

Bob151, less than a week ago I had no trouble installing XP on a system with a GA-P35-DS3L board using a SATA drive. It's a Western Digital. What Service Pack level do you have on the XP install CD? I'd be sure to use SP2 or higher. hclarkjr you don't have to put the SATA controllers into native model to install XP/2000. I kept it at the default of disabled. The manual means you can enable to get Native Mode on operating systems that support it, but it's not a requirement.

 

[Bob151]

Thanks.

Both the XP Pro and XP Home CDs are SP2.

I believe I have tried with native mode on and off. I have tried with the HD plugged into SATA slot 3 or 4 as well.

Wiping it? Do you mean with a format or a repartition/unpartition? I need to find that old PartitionMagic CD of mine. That will take a while. Hmm, I wonder if Ubuntu will let me wipe away partitions it is booted to. I really don't know that much about linux to functionally administer it.

 

[braddy752]

Was your HDD attached to SATA Port 0 or was it attached to other ports?
And since your board works with Linux OS, you can be sure that it's not a board problem.
Perhaps getting another copy of WinXP might solve the case?
How was your HDD partitioned?

 

[amenx]

Just a shot in the dark, since you have 2 DVD units, copy the XP CD to the HD (using BartCD or other bootable CD and) and see if you can install it from the HD.

 

[Bob151]

Well, according to page 24 of my manual, its plugged into SATAII0.

It's partition state, I'm not well enough to know if its right or not.

(parted) print

Disk /dev/sda: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 244GB 244GB primary ext3 boot
2 244GB 250GB 6185MB extended
5 244GB 250GB 6185MB logical linux-swap

 

[SorryImLate]

Weird my loaded up no problem but mine was xp 32bit oem. Mine came with F7 bios also

 

[Bob151]

Well, Braddy had a good idea of the direction. I deleted all the various partitions (listed above). I let the system try to boot to the HD and god some kind of grub error. Then I booted to the XP Install CD and it had no problem, even with a remnat of grub on the HD (in the MBT or whatever?)

I just do not recall having XP struggle to install over top of another OS before...

Thanks all.