Win 2000 major installation problem...HELP!!!

[spoma]

I am trying to install Windows 2000 Professional on a PC with Biostar M7VKB motherboard and an athlon t-bird 700. It has 256mb of SDRAM a Creative Geforce 2 GTS videocard and an Acer 56x CD-ROM. During the installation when it searches to discover devices it comes back with a fatal hardware failure and it says that system has halted. I can do nothing here but reboot and this will continuously happen. I am able to run 98se and Millenium on this PC but for some reason 2000 will not go. Does anyone have any solutions to what is happening or could anyone let me know exactly what the installation is looking at here? Do I have a bad piece of hardware or is it just something 2000 does not like.
I have tried botha clean install of 2000 and upgrading from 98se. Neither one will work.

 

[Slikkster]

You need to be absolutely specific about the error message(s) you are getting. Reprint them here verbatim...word for word, letter for letter.

 

[spoma]

I don't have the exact message in fornt of me right now. But it said:

It goes to a blue screen and says

There has been a hardware failure
*** System has Halted ****



I am 99% sure that this is the exact message. Any ideas

 

[uhohibrokeit]

Did you update your BIOS lately?

 

[afropick]

You probably need to hit F6 when it asks at the bottom of the screen during setup and then later supply the ATA100 or RAID driver for your motherboard.

 

[spoma]

I do have the newest version of the bios. They have not been updated since July.
As far as the F6 I did think about that but there is no RAID onboard and there are no separate ata100 drivers. Also I have got the error before for the F6 thing and it is a completely different error.

 

[uhohibrokeit]

make sure ACPI support is enabled in your BIOS...

 

[Nothinman]

Install without ACPI.

 

[spoma]

I got confused there.
uhohibrokeit says make sure ACPI is installedd
nothinman says install without ACPI

is it supposed to be enabled or disabled with the install? what would this be under in the bios?

 

[uhohibrokeit]

default Win2K install will use the ACPI Kernel... if oyu have ACPI disabled in your bios, it will not install correctly, and if its already installed and you disable ACPI in your bios, Win2K will lock while booting.

there is really no need to ever disable ACPI in Win2K pro, as its much much easier and smoother than worring about IRQ conflicts and stuff... but after Win2K is installed you can change its kernal to a non ACPI one if you want... i wouldnt recommend it


whatever nothinman is talking about i dont know... most people think ACPI is just power saving features


also... i dont know if you can even disbale or enable it on that board, hopefully it supports it (it should unless its pretty old). it should be listed with ACPI in the line in your bios somewhere. most BIOSes that do not hae the option have it always enabled... i dont know if this will fix your problem, its just something to check

 

[spoma]

uhohibrokeit
thanks alot. i will give this a look when i get home.

 

[Slikkster]

A tential problem you're having has to do with your Highpoint ATA-100 Controller. The manual for your motherboard lists a specific routine that MUST be adhered to when installing Windows 2000: (Quoting from the manual now)

"Before you start to install Windows 2000, you have to create a driver disk from the driver CD. You can copy the HPT370 UDMA Controller driver files from the driver cd that comes with this motherboard. The path for the HPT370 UDMA Controller driver files is:

"X :\INF\VKB\HPoint\Floppy" (X is your CD-ROM)

Please note two things before you copy the driver files to diskette. Firstly, the driver files must be copied to the root directory of the diskette. Secondly, you have to set your system to "Show all files". Otherwise, you will be unable to copy some important system files to diskette.

Installing Windows 2000 from a CD:

1. Press the "F6" key when Windows 2000 displays the following message:

"Setup is inspecting your computer systems hardware". This will display a new setup screen, then prompt you to press the "S" key to add a device. (S=Specify Additional Device)

2. Press S, and insert the HPT370 UDMA Controller driver diskette. Press Enter when prompted and allow Windows 2000 to install the HPT370 UDMA Controller Drivers.

3. Please use the UP or DOWN arrow key to move the highlight to the mass storage device you want and press {ENTER}

4. Win2000 will continue and complete the installation procedure."

Now, after you do that, I'd try to continue the Win2000 installation routine. If it STILL bluescreens afterwards, I'd do the following (according to some others who have this or similar boards and problems installing Windows 2000):

From what I can gather on the net, people who have this and similar boards with your installation problem have gotten around it by disabling the onboard-sound in the bios, then re-enabling it after installation is complete. You may need to download win2k drivers for the onboard sound at that point.

I disagree with the person who claims that Win2k will not install correctly with ACPI disabled. That's not correct. I've run it that way myself, without problem. But my point for now is to try disabling the onboard sound first in the bios. It's under the Integrated Peripherals heading. Once there, go to the "Multi-Media" heading. Choose "Disable", then try reinstalling Win2K.

I don't think your issues have anything to do with ACPI, by the way.

 

[spoma]

that makes sense actually. i will give that a shot as soon as i get home. the onboard sound has been giving me a ton of problems anyway with any of the operating systems for it won't do four speaker surround sound. thanks for the help.

 

[Slikkster]

I edited my previous response. Please follow the instructions in the manner I outlined in the edited message. I'd do the onboard sound attempt last, and only if it's a problem.

 

[spoma]

Slikkster
Thanks for the info. I will give it a shot tonight.
I don't have the installation CD so I am assuming that I can download that UDMA controller on their website. I am going to check it out right now. Thanks for the help.

 

[spoma]

I checked the info on their website and there was nothing so i went high-points website and found the drivers there. Their also seem to bios there for this chipset? Do I need to install those also?

Disregard this text above because the hpt370 chip is optional and it is not in this verison of the motherboard.
I think I will try the onboard sound thing.

 

[Nothinman]

there is really no need to ever disable ACPI in Win2K pro, as its much much easier and smoother than worring about IRQ conflicts and stuff... but after Win2K is installed you can change its kernal to a non ACPI one if you want... i wouldnt recommend it

ACPI isn't necessary to avoid IRQ conflics, PCI takes care of that already and has for a while and disabling ACPI won't hurt that at all.

 

[uhohibrokeit]

i said it was a nice feature... and if you think PCI helps you avoid IRQ conflicts... well yes i guess its better at that than ISA was...

if you have ACPI support enabled, then install Win2K, then disable ACPI support for your system, windows will not work correctly unless you change its working kernel.

go ahead and disable all your ACPI in win2k, have fun!

and yes i agree it probably isnt an issue hes having problems with, i just said he should check its setting since it takes 5 seconds to do.

 

[Nothinman]

f you have ACPI support enabled, then install Win2K, then disable ACPI support for your system, windows will not work correctly unless you change its working kernel.

go ahead and disable all your ACPI in win2k, have fun!

I realize that, he said he couldn't get it installed so that's not really an issue.

 

[wyesgye]

ran into this before... sort of. If you have the luxury, try a different CDROM device. I know it sounds unlikely but I have seen problems with the M7VKD and some cdrom devices. The ones that I know work are: Sony 52x, Lite-on, and maybe most current DVD drives (higher quality ones).
I had a customer that had problems installing Redhat 7.2 on this board. He was using an older hitachi that would cause a freeze when detecting devices. I know not the same OS, but functions are the same hardware-wise.

Anyhow, give that a try.