Problem installing XP on an A64 system

[jvarszegi]

Basically, everything went swimmingly, right up to installing from the bootable CD drive. It goes through the initial copy-to-disk etc., then tells me it needs to restart, then begins again from the beginning! ARRGH.

 

[mechBgon]

You'll need to set your boot-device priority in your motherboard's BIOS menus so it knows that booting from the hard drive is an option. If you need more help than that, post your full specs please.

 

[silverpig]

Yeah man this is simple. On the reboot just remove the cd from the drive. Let it boot from the hard disk, and then if it asks for the cd, just put it in again.

 

[jvarszegi]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
You'll need to set your boot-device priority in your motherboard's BIOS menus so it knows that booting from the hard drive is an option. If you need more help than that, post your full specs please.

(Thanks to both of you.)

I wish it were as simple as removing the CD. When I first started installing Windows, I had the boot priority set like this: floppy - CD - HD. I tried removing the disk from the drive, but no dice. I tried various combinations including installing from scratch, then removing everything but the hard drive from the boot order as part of the restart etc., but still no dice!!! (ulch) My system:

My system:

Athlon 64 3500+ (Winchester)
ASUS A8N-SLI
Leadtek 6600GT
1 GB Corsair XMS RAM
2 X Seagate 7200.7 160GB SATA
Enermax Noisetaker 600W

I've got both SATA drives hooked up to the #1 and #2 nForce4 SATA connections, and both the Nvidia RAID and ancillary on-board Silicon Image RAID are disabled.

Now, Windows sees and formats the drive just fine, and copies the files; everything looks normal until the restart. I didn't figure I needed to install a special RAID driver, since I'm not using RAID; I didn't figure that I needed to install any special disk drivers for SATA, since it recognizes and uses the drive.

My Windows XP CD is an OEM version which includes SP2. Thanks!!! This is my first home build; I've built servers several times, but never had any problems like this because I was used to the RAID installation routine and never ran into this sort of problem. BTW, I used your guide; it was very helpful.

Now I have to go to work... At least I have a long weekend to tinker with my new machine.

Edit:

When I take the CD out during restart or just fail to hit any key to boot from the CD, the result is the same, even though as I said Windows recognizes both drives, formats them, and copies files to the boot drive:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path
and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows documentation about hardware disk
configuration and your hardware reference manuals for
additional information.

I noticed that on Microsoft's site there's a place to download XP boot disk files, even though it doesn't seem you can create them yourself any more. I can try that tonight, but here's what's bothering me the most: Microsoft's site says that in future versions, even these downloadable boot floppies will be discarded!!! WTF? How can they do that if their install routines don't work perfectly from CD?

 

[mechBgon]

Since Windows Setup was able to see your hard drive and put stuff on it, your problem here is purely a SATA problem requiring proper BIOS settings on your A8N SLI Deluxe.

To start with, at POST, press the F8 key and wait. When POST is complete, it will probably display a list of all potential boot devices. Pick the first SATA hard drive off the list that appears on the screen and proceed with Windows Setup. If that doesn't work, pick the second of the two SATA drives. That's a stopgap just to get you over the Windows Setup fretting As long as I'm on the subject of Windows Setup, consult this set of security suggestions to help avoid worm infection during the vulnerable just-built stage.

After that, you will need to go to the Asus's BOOT menu and delve into the Hard Disk Drives menu shown on page 4-41 of your manual. If the system's got more than one drive in it, then it may simply be looking at the wrong one, so swap them there and see if that helps.

 

[LiLithTecH]

Is the LEADTECH Card the PCI-E version?

If it is the PCI-E version, do you have it set as the DEFAULT in the BIOS (the default is AGP)?

 

[jvarszegi]

The BIOS didn't have any settings for AGP, at least that I could see. It's a pretty polished BIOS, very easy to use. The problem turned out to be the wrong SATA/RAID drivers on the mandatory floppy I had to make. Having two separate hardware options for RAID/SATA control didn't help any, and neither did the lack of good documentation. Many thanks to everyone, especially mechBgon, for helping. I'm typing this on my machine, and man is it sweet! I didn't realize how much stuff came with this chipset, even an on-board firewall.