Take a look

[TWills]

Normally, I don't get stumped this easily.

Computer in question:
Win ME
(original) Athlon 1.3ghz
nforce 2 biostar M7NCD
ATI 9600 pro
512 ddr
(Note: This computer has been upgraded extensively. It used to be an HP machine with an HP mobo and p/s, and geforce 2 card. It retains the original maxtor hard drive, two optical drives, and athlon 1.3ghz. Everything else has been replaced, and is listed above.)

Here's the problem. The computer comes in for repair, and I have permission from the owner to wipe the drive and put Win XP on it. Here's where my problem lies. I went ahead and wiped the drive and popped in a Win XP home edition upgrade disk. It boots off the cd, loads a few drivers, then says it is starting windows.......and hangs there.

I figured it had something to do with my disk being the uprade edition (even though I have used the same one on other computers for installation), so I go ahead and install my old copy of windows 98 and see if I can install xp from there. It went fine, all the way up to right after the first reboot in the win XP setup process. Here's what happens.

It posts, boots from the cd, asks if i want to continue or cancel setup (to which i select continue), and starts to enter setup again. It asks if I need to install 3rd party scsi or raid controllers(no), then......a blank screen. No hdd activity, no cd spindling. It justs sits there, looking fancy. What am I doing wrong?

EDIT: I swapped out the hdd and cdrom for other ones and still had the same problem. Should I switch out procs?

EDIT2: I quit trying to install an os on the computer and pulged in a hard drive that already had an os on it. Guess what? Same thing! It won't load the os off of the hard drive with XP! I didn't have a problem with Win ME or 98, but it won't come near XP.

I looked for bios updates on biostar-usa.com, but the most recent one on there was in march of '03. Mine is 8/01/03. Great.

One other thing. This mobo does have RAID, could that possibly be conflicting with me?

 

[theMan]

try reformatting the drive again. a screwed up drive can cause that.

 

[MobiusPizza]

From there on after the "F6" raid controllers prompt what it does is loads from CD the setup files
I have not a single idea.
This "blank screen" problem does seem to be common

Can you check your CD Rom and HDD, and are you sure the mobo does not need a Raid controller driver? Try antoher IDE channel?
If you have the resources I'd try a new CD-Rom, a new HDD.

 

[TWills]

Originally posted by: theman
try reformatting the drive again. a screwed up drive can cause that.

What's the command for the low level format? I've reformatted the thing and had the same problem in NTFS and Fat32. And why did win98 install so smoothly while XP is giving me so much grief?

Do you think I should try a different hdd?

From there on after the "F6" raid controllers prompt what it does is loads from CD the setup files
I have not a single idea.
This "blank screen" problem does seem to be common

Can you check your CD Rom and HDD, and are you sure the mobo does not need a Raid controller driver? Try antoher IDE channel?
If you have the resources I'd try a new CD-Rom, a new HDD.

thanks, I'll try that, but I'm still open for other opinions if you can suggest something

 

[manly]

Update the BIOS if you can.

 

[MobiusPizza]

Originally posted by: TWills
What's the command for the low level format? I've reformatted the thing and had the same problem in NTFS and Fat32. And why did win98 install so smoothly while XP is giving me so much grief?

There isn't a low-level format command. You'd need a utility
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_llfmt_what.html

Probably because WinXP is not happy with some of the old components...
As manly mentioned, update BIOS if you can.
If your CD-Rom is old, try a newer one as well

 

[TWills]

bump.

 

[TWills]

ok, final bump

 

[manly]

Look again:
http://biostar-usa.com/mbdownloads.asp?model=m7ncd