Ok, annoying 2k install problem

[Kappo]

Alright, I had about 3 machines laying around and I just compiled and made what was to be a server for my home network. I tried to install Win2K and I get this error (after it has formatted the drive and copied all of the files):

Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<windows 2000 root>\system\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Please re-install a copy of the above file.

I have tried 4 different CD-ROMs, 2 different kinds of RAM, updating the BIOS on the motherboard, checking the HD for errors and even making a copy of my CD. ALL of those give the exact same error. Now, before I started swapping stuff out I did actually get to where it would start to load Windows, but it ended up simply erroring out (now I cant get that far).

System Specs:

Asus P2B-F
Generic RAM (as well as Kingston Valueram)
Gimpy ATI 8 meg vid card
HP Network Card (OEM) (tried with and without)
Maxtor 10 gig HD (removed the 80 gig until stuff installs)
4 different CD-ROMS tried (2 I KNOW are good)

Any ideas? Thank you in advance!

 

[LiLithTecH]

This may help (actually a common problem).

Err Msg: Windows NT Could Not Start...Ntoskrnl.exe

 

[Kappo]

hmmm well I tried to change the boot.ini file..which would have been nice if it worked...but it didnt. Booted to the recovery console. No dice. Tried fixboot, fixmbr, the boot.ini looks great. NTLDR is there. I cannot seem to figure this out.

I even partitioned the HD to 7.5 gig to see if that would help, but to no avail. I am stumped!

 

[Kappo]

Ran a memtest with good results, same with a disk check and a low level format. Replaced the IDE cable got the exact same thing

 

[Guga]

I don't know if you had tried it, but how you have your devices configured??
Try to put the cdrom on the same ide channel of your hdd.
It may be problems with the ide controller. Try to install both devices (cdrom and hdd) on the same controller. If you aren't sucefully try the other ide channel.

 

[Bglad]

Try this. Format your drive clean. Copy the entire 2K cd to the HD then run your install from the HD. I've had these problems on a few machines and that always solves it for me.

 

[Kappo]

Bglad, that is what I ended up doing, although I went with XP Pro instead. I tested a few other things, and setting the secondary master as my boot drive and secondary slave as my cdrom everything installed perfectly. But I still needed to get my big drive on there somehow. So I installed and got it working on secondary master, then switched it to primary master and it seems to work ok.

Thank all of you for your help!