Installation Failures

[Vernholio]

Hey all,

I just put together a new system, comprised of the following:

New Components:
ASUS K8N Motherboard (just the K8N, not the "-E Deluxe")
- OnBoard Audio and 10/100 NIC (which I'm using)
- BIOS ver. 1.003 (the version that came installed)
AMD Athlon 3000+ Processor
1 GB of RAM (PC400, dual Kingston 184-pin 512's)
Maxtor 80GB HDD
Sony DVD R/W+ Drive
GeFORCE 5700 Ultra (256 MB) Video Card (Can't remember the brand name)
New case (don't know the brand), but it's runnign an Enertech 350W Power Supply

Existing Components
HP CD R/W Drive
Seagate 40 GB HDD

I'm attempting to run Windows 2000 Professional and it seems to install fine. I've applied all of the service pack/critical component upgrades and I've downloaded and applied all of the most recent drivers for the mobo (from Asus' website - audio, chipset, etc.) and Video Card (from nVidia's web site). Going into the Hardware config, there are no conflicts and everything seems to be up to par.

My issue is this, nearly every game/application I try to install fails during installation -- both DVD and CD. Could there be some odd conflict trying to run both a CD-R/W and a DVD R/W at the same time? I'm at work now, so I can't give the specific errors that occur during install (but they're different for each app I'm trying to install).

I have re-installed the O/S and re-applied all service packs 6 times now, using both the CD R/W and DVD R/W drives as the boot source, and there was no change. I've also tried replacing the ribbon cable in use by the drives, but that didn't work either. Should I maybe disable the on-board audio and try using my old SB Live card? Crap, should I scrap Win2K and go out and blow the $200 BestBuy wants for XP?

OK, sorry about the length of this (and for my frustration), but I've been wrestling with this thing for 2 weeks now and I wanted to get in as much info as possible to try to get this fixed.

Thanks a lot for taking the time, and for any help that you can give!

- Vernholio

 

[meltdown75]

Hi welcome to the forums.

that is kinda strange. did you do a fresh install of Win2k? When's the last time you ran chkdsk / scandisk? I'd do that pronto. What kind of error message do you get? Do you have your HD on one channel and the 2 optical drives on the other?

 

[Vernholio]

First off, thanks a lot for the welcome!

In response to your questions: Yes, every time I'm performing a fresh install of Win2K, fully formatting the HDD each time. I have not run scandisk/chkdsk, yet but I will try that. The errors are related to the app I'm installing (mostly games):

WarCraft III installed fine, no problems - The Frozen Throne Expansion always gets about 1/2 to 2/3 completed (varies) and then fails with a "Critical Error <Error #>" and the only option given is to abort the install. Installed via CD

LOTR: The Battle for Middle-earth always has data transfer problems (seems to be the audio files) which occur at about 25% of the way through. However, I did install this successfully once, but while playing it would crash at various intervals. Installed via DVD

Neverwinter Nights: Also gives "Critical Error" type messages and fails and different phases of the install. Installed via CD

I'll admit my ignorance here, can you elaborate a little on the different channels? Is this hardware or software related?

Thansk for the quick response,

- Vernholio

 

[Vernholio]

Also, on a side note since you brought up "chkdsk", I've noticed that after applying Service Pack 4 and rebooting, Win2K automatically runs "chkdsk" before actually booting the O/S and displays the results (unfortunately too fast for me to gather info). I've never noticed this before when running the Win2K install on other machines... maybe the HDD the O/S is on is bad.

 

[meltdown75]

It could be an HD issue, definitely. When they get wonky, you never really know how the heck they will behave.

By the channels, I mean which IDE channel you have your drives installed on. Your mobo probably has IDE-0 and IDE-1 - generally (not written in stone) the hard drives go on one and the optical drives go on the other. I'd also be interested in your master/slave settings for the drives you have installed. I usually don't like to have my optical drives on the same channel as my hard drives, but that's just me.

Since you only have a 40gb, might be time for an upgrade anyway... from the sounds of it, the drive will be full pretty quick with the games you're installing. The pisser about HD problems is that you really can't pinpoint them most of the time unless you swap out with a verified good working drive. I'm also assuming you're using the store bought versions of the games, and not 'backup' copies .

back after lunch... g/l

 

[Vernholio]

That's what I figured you meant by the channels. I do have them on separate channels. IDE-0 houses the HDD's while IDE-1 houses the CD/DVD drives. I've fiddled around with the Master/Slave settings, swapping between the DVD writer as master and the CD as slave to start, followed by flipping it around to see what would happen. Currently I have the CD as the master.

Actually, I have an 80GB I just bought that the O/S is running on, while I have an additional 40 for other storage. Maybe the 80GB is bad... Anyway, all of the games I'm installing are "store-bought, non-backup" versions (I liked your reference there!).

I'll try another HDD drive I'm "liberating" from the office and see what happens.

Thanks for the help!

- Vernholio

 

[meltdown75]

Oh - geez I just noticed you had the 80gb too.

Well best of luck with it... I am sure if you posted the exact error codes, you will find that someone or other has run into them before. Actually sometimes even a forum search for example: '0e000070' or what have you, can turn up some interesting results and quite often lead to the solution.

Also remember google is your error code friend... take care

 

[KGB]

Vern,

Are you using the nVidia SW IDE drivers?
If so, that could be the problem.
Try reverting to the standard M$ IDE drivers and see if your problem goes away.

Let us know.

 

[Vernholio]

Great guys... thanks a lot for the tips! KGBMAN... how would I go about getting and reverting to the "M$ IDE" drivers?

- Vernholio

 

[Vernholio]

D'oh!! I just got the "M$" acronym reference! Are you referring to the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Devices" node in the Device Manager window of Win2K? If so, I'll take a look at these when I get home.

Thanks again,

- Vernholio

 

[KGB]

Go through Device Manager and select the IDE / ATAPI Devices.
Under the Driver tab on the Rroperties window, select the Update Driver button and select the MS one.
If you have XP, one of the options should be Roll Back the driver.

 

[Vernholio]

That's what I thought... thanks again for all the help!

 

[KGB]

Vern,

BTW... Welcome to the Forums!

Let us know what happens.

 

[Vernholio]

OK...

Tried all suggestions, CHKDSK brings up nothing when I run it (all seems good). As far as installing the old drivers goes, get this... When I access the Device Manager and the "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" node, there's duplicates of all of the entries: Primary IDE Channel (x2), Secondary IDE Channel (x2), and Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller (x2). Is this because it's a "Dual Channel" controller? Anyway, I tried re-installing the old drivers for each, and even disabling all of the duplicates... none of these ideas worked. Any other ideas?

I'm off to try installing the O/S onto a differnt hard disk... O/S install #7! Woo hoo!!

As always, thanks a lot for the help!

- Vernholio

 

[Vernholio]

Well... I thought I had it figured out, but no go. I tried a different HDD and the O/S installed OK and, FINALLY one of the game installs worked just fine (LOTR). Unfortunately, now I'm having a few other problems that are leading me to believe that there's something pretty wrong with the whole system...

Random Win2K Default Processes (svchost, TASKMGR, LSASS. mstask) are "running into errors and being shut down by Windows". It states that there's a log entry created, but I can't seem to find them (any ideas?). If I reboot my system they'll usually start running again, but then another one usually goes down.

Trying to install an Adobe product for work (FrameMaker), I got an error stating that it needs at least 3MB of Virtual Memory to run, and after checking out my VM settings, the defaults were set at 1536 MB... so there was plenty. Even after reboot this was still an issue.

Lastly, I got the message: "Error Message: SERVICES.EXE Terminated Unexpectedly with Status Code 128". Looking this up on the M$ knowledge base, I have to edit the registry to fix this. I can do it, but I get the feeling it won't make much of a difference.

Anyway, does anybody have any idea what in the heck is going on? I'm getting the feeling the whole set up is jacked, and I'm screwed because I didn't keep a lot of the original packaging (so the store won't take it back). Yeah, I'm an idiot... but hell, it seemed to work great when I first set it up.

OK, rambling completed... Thanks again for the help.

- Vernholio

 

[InlineFive]

One thing you should have done in the beginning when this issue started was to check your memory's integrity. Download Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com and run that overnight and see if any errors come up.

-Por

 

[Vernholio]

I'll give that a try... thanks for the suggestion.

- Vern