New System: Cannot install windows

[lozina]

I finished assembling my new HTPC and it POSTs fine and starts booting off the Windows XP setup disc- first doing some initial hardware check then going to the blue screen where is says something like windows setup top left and on bottom prints out a bunch of various components it's checking/setting up. Then on the bottom it says something like "starting up windows" and it wil just hang here... I'd leave it for 30 minutes and nothing happens. I have tried to reboot many times and tried using another Windows setup disc but for Windows 2003 server but end up with exactly same results.

The components currently installed are as follows:

Intel E6400 Conroe CPU
ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe ("conroe ready")
2 sticks of 1Gb Crucial DDR2 533 RAM
(Edit: I plugged the RAM into DIMM_A1 & DIMM_A2 so both in Channel A, despite the slots actual colors not matching- I thought that was odd)
Seasonic S12-430 PSU
Plextor 755SA
MSI GeForce 7600 GT video
Sound Blaster X-Fi sound
Happauge PVR-500 tv tuner
250 Gb Seagate SATA HD

lemme know if you need more details on something

don't think ASUS support is open until Monday 🙁

My current hunches

- RAM not plugged in properly? But I imagine I wouldn't even get to boot into Windows setup at all if so...

- PSU not powerful enough? I think a 500W PSU was recommended for this Mobo but I figured I wasn't going to be using up much juice.. and also I think that I would notice more severe problems if this was true


edit2: I'll be trying out stuff from this microsoft support page but if you have any ideas please let me know!

 

[LiLithTecH]

Did you try removing the TV & Sound Cards before installing?

Are you using RAID?
If so, did you load the drivers at the beginning of the Windows install?

The color of the slots is for running in the memory in Dual Channel mode.

 

[lozina]

yeah i removed the sound card and tv tuner and tried again. I also tried disabling a bunch of the features in the bios like the microsoft articles suggest. then I started playing around with the RAM - took out one chip left one in the primary slot and tried again, then when that didnt work swapped the two chips.

I was able to reach ASUS today and the guy basically said the problem is either going to be your RAM, the optical device, or the hard drive.

I will try to run memtest86 (can you load it via USB or CDROM?) to test the RAM but I can't verify the RAM I bought is exactly compatable with this board until crucial tech support is open tomorrow (I bought this RAM under their web site for the P5N32-SLI DELUXE board thinking there wouldnt be any difference between that and the P5N32-SLI SE DELUXE board- which was not listed under their options...

then if the memtest looks good I have some spare cdroms and hard drives to play with

ugh what a waste of time

 

[lozina]

narrowing it down alot but still no luck.

I swapped the cdrom and hard drive with ones form my current system which I am posting right now from. no difference.

I also ran memtest86 went through 3 iterations of the 9 tests, took almost 2 hours- no errors detected.

I do not use RAID on this system, just one 250 Gb SATA drive. I ran a HD diagnostic tool on it and it found no errors either, though I didnt run the full test which takes several hours. I figured if I'm getting the same problem with the HD I swapped out of my current system it's probably not the HD