Edit: Problem fixed! See my other post below.
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I recently upgraded my RAM, CPU, vid card, and processor and I decided I would reformat my hard drive for good measure. I was able to boot into my existing windows installation from my old build and do whatever I wanted as if the drive were perfectly fine as is. I even ran Prime95 for several minutes to make sure my heatsink was seated properly, and it did not give me any errors. After glancing through and seeing all the old junk I had on my drive, I decided to reformat anyway. I copied up any important documents to my backup HD and proceeded to reformat.
I popped in the Windows CD and set my boot priority accordingly, but it wouldn't enter setup. I would get the message to press any key, but when I did nothing would happen. Certain other bootable CDs result checksum errors when I run them, while others work fine. This may or may not be related to my main problem, but I decided to throw it in here regardless.
Anyway, I downloaded the six-floppy XP boot disk using my other PC and entered setup that way. When I attempted to reformat in NTFS, setup said that my drive was damaged and that it couldn't continue. Yikes!
I popped in my trusty Windows 98 floppy boot disk and ran fdisk - it reformatted in FAT perfectly without any problems. I tried the XP install again afterward to see if I could now reformat in NTFS - same problem as before.
Back to the 98 boot disk, I ran the complete scandisk scan (incl. surface scan) which reported that my drive is perfectly fine. Thinking that maybe it may have somehow fixed the problem anyway, I tried the XP install once more - no dice.
Finally I reached my last resort and decided to completely wipe my drive. I ran DBAN (Darik's boot and nuke) from another floppy to write zeroes to my drive, and after trying to install once more, XP setup still thinks my drive is damaged.
A quick recap:
I was able to boot normally into the old windows installation.
The hard drive is being recognized properly in windows and the bios.
Reformatting with fdisk, running a surface scan, and writing zeroes all went fine.
Plugging the drive into different SATA ports did not help.
XP setup still won't reformat my drive after partitioning it.
I don't want to RMA anything without being absolutely sure (otherwise I get stuck with the shipping tab), but my current inclination is that the drive controller on the motherboard is acting up (which might explain the optical drive issues as well). Unfortunately that doesn't explain why I was able to boot into the old windows installation without any problems.
Anyway, I'd appreciate any insight you guys may have on what could be causing this. Here is the relevant hardware involved:
CPU: Q6600
Mobo: GA-P35-DS3L (bios rev. F7)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x1GB PC6400
HD: Western Digital Raptor 150GB ADFD SATA
Optical drive: AOpen 16x DVD+/-R E-IDE/ATAPI
Windows XP SP2
One more note:
In order for DBAN to see my hard drive, I have to run SATA ports 0 and 1 in legacy mode (native mode disabled). Not sure if this is relevant.
---
I recently upgraded my RAM, CPU, vid card, and processor and I decided I would reformat my hard drive for good measure. I was able to boot into my existing windows installation from my old build and do whatever I wanted as if the drive were perfectly fine as is. I even ran Prime95 for several minutes to make sure my heatsink was seated properly, and it did not give me any errors. After glancing through and seeing all the old junk I had on my drive, I decided to reformat anyway. I copied up any important documents to my backup HD and proceeded to reformat.
I popped in the Windows CD and set my boot priority accordingly, but it wouldn't enter setup. I would get the message to press any key, but when I did nothing would happen. Certain other bootable CDs result checksum errors when I run them, while others work fine. This may or may not be related to my main problem, but I decided to throw it in here regardless.
Anyway, I downloaded the six-floppy XP boot disk using my other PC and entered setup that way. When I attempted to reformat in NTFS, setup said that my drive was damaged and that it couldn't continue. Yikes!
I popped in my trusty Windows 98 floppy boot disk and ran fdisk - it reformatted in FAT perfectly without any problems. I tried the XP install again afterward to see if I could now reformat in NTFS - same problem as before.
Back to the 98 boot disk, I ran the complete scandisk scan (incl. surface scan) which reported that my drive is perfectly fine. Thinking that maybe it may have somehow fixed the problem anyway, I tried the XP install once more - no dice.
Finally I reached my last resort and decided to completely wipe my drive. I ran DBAN (Darik's boot and nuke) from another floppy to write zeroes to my drive, and after trying to install once more, XP setup still thinks my drive is damaged.
A quick recap:
I was able to boot normally into the old windows installation.
The hard drive is being recognized properly in windows and the bios.
Reformatting with fdisk, running a surface scan, and writing zeroes all went fine.
Plugging the drive into different SATA ports did not help.
XP setup still won't reformat my drive after partitioning it.
I don't want to RMA anything without being absolutely sure (otherwise I get stuck with the shipping tab), but my current inclination is that the drive controller on the motherboard is acting up (which might explain the optical drive issues as well). Unfortunately that doesn't explain why I was able to boot into the old windows installation without any problems.
Anyway, I'd appreciate any insight you guys may have on what could be causing this. Here is the relevant hardware involved:
CPU: Q6600
Mobo: GA-P35-DS3L (bios rev. F7)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x1GB PC6400
HD: Western Digital Raptor 150GB ADFD SATA
Optical drive: AOpen 16x DVD+/-R E-IDE/ATAPI
Windows XP SP2
One more note:
In order for DBAN to see my hard drive, I have to run SATA ports 0 and 1 in legacy mode (native mode disabled). Not sure if this is relevant.
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