Hard Drive (?) Problem

[Colonelbob]

I have been lurking for some time, this site and its forums are pretty neat. I have a problem.

I've been working on my first home-built computer. The first night that I set it up, everything went great, and Win XP installed flawlessly.

However, a friend who was helping me out started installing a whole mess of drivers from the mobo's CD simultaneously, and XP crashed. Gave me a black screen with the mouse cursor on it. We did a soft reset, and now we couldn't get back into XP.

The computer would boot from the XP CD, detect our hardware, partition my hard drive (list of components below), install some XP files, and ask to reboot, which I'm guessing is normal. But after rebooting, the computer would act as if none of the previous XP install steps had happened. It would boot from CD again, detect hardware again, etc... and reboot. And do this over and over again.

The computer doesn't always get this far. Sometimes it hangs saying "Verifying DMI Pool Data" or at other places, but in the past 5 or 10 restarts, it has not done so.

Also, it seems like the XP files the computer said it installed are actually there on the HD (we can see it when XP install recovery shows us the contents of C:\windows). It seems like the computer just refuses to boot from them, or something like that.

Things we have tried:
replacing HD (got a new one of the exact same type, same deal)
checking HD cable connections, swapping out HD cable
checking boot order of BIOS (floppy, HD 0, CD-ROM)
flashing/updating BIOS
installing Win98SE instead (that did even worse)
and various other small stuff

List of components (all brand new, except serial keyboard and monitor we're using to troubleshoot):
Gigabyte 8IEXP motherboard
P4 2.4B processor w/stock cooling (no thermal compound used)
512 mb RAM (Mushkin... arrived in a deflated bag, but Mushkin said it should be alright)
350w Enermax PSU
Western Digital 120GB SE HD w/8 mb cache (1200JB)
Samsung 16x DVD-ROM
Lite-On 48x CD-RW
Chaintech GF 4200 128mb
Audigy OEM

Any solutions you have would be greatly appreciated. I am at wits' end, as I need this computer to be up and running ASAP so I can burn it in... I'm moving away from home on the 31st.

Thanks very much to anyone who helps.

 

[Colonelbob]

This is going to sound dumb, but after re-checking everything, we went to Western Digital's site, where we found out that our jumper was set incorrectly.

If you or anyone you know ever has a similar problem:
Apparently, for 1-HD setups, the jumper shouldn't be set to "master" - it should be in the "neutral" position. For my setup, that meant simply taking the jumper off. WinXP booted up right after that (it was already installed, just waiting to be unlocked). I have not yet put it through any torture tests, though, so only time will tell.

Sorry to waste your time. <Jumps up and down with a big grin on his face.>

 

[corkyg]

ColonelBob - here's another suggestion. If you are using 80-wire ATA 66/100 cables or rounded cables, you can set your drive jumpers to CS or Cable Select and not worry about it. It will always be right then according to cable position.

I have that on all my systems and my client's systems - and I no longer worry about jumpers.

 

[earthman]

Cable select doesn't work on all systems. There is no consistent rule for setting jumpers, either. Some hard drives when installed singly will work set to master, some need the jumper in a neutral or entirely off position. Some don't seem to care where the jumper is if there is only one drive. You should always go by the diagram on the drive. Most drives come set to run single.

 

[Colonelbob]

To Corky-G:

Cable select did not, I repeat, did not work. That's what I originally set the HD to (or did it come like that? I don't remember) - but that's when the problems started. I then set it to Master AND used the "Master" part of the IDE cable just to make sure, no dice again. I guess it varies from drive to drive, as Earthman says.

I repeat, if you have a Western Digital 1200JB (120gb with 8mb cache), take the jumper off for one-HD configurations. At the very least, go to Western Digital's website and find out what jumper settings to use if you're having problems. This is the price I pay for buying OEM and not getting an instruction manual.