Win2k won't install on A7V ata100 HD

[TheFoy]

This is getting rather frustrating. I am building a system for a friend, but can't get win2k to install. It will always get to the part where it begins copying files it has saved to the hd, after the format. It will get to x% on the bar at the bottom, and then just freeze. I have no idea why it is doing it.

System
Athalon TB 800
Asus A7V
256 Ram
ibm deskstar whatever ata100 30 gig
herc. 3d prophet II MX
pioneer 10x dvd
SBlive value

I have tried the hd on both the ata100 controller and the regular ide hook ups. No change. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[blammo22]

Some suggestions:

1) When you install on the Promise controller, are you loading the drivers off floppy (i.e., did you hit F6 during the setup and select the Promise drivers)? I had a similar problem (on a P3 setup w/ Ultra66 card) when I forgot to do this...

2) If you install off the ATA66 ports, you may want to (temporarily at least) set the HD to ATA66 mode (use the IBM ataswitch utility). Some people have had problems getting these ATA100 drives to run 100% stable on an ATA66 controller when the drive is set to ATA100.

3) Try reseating memory, video, etc...

4) If you haven't tried it yet, pull out everything except the essential stuff - video card, memory, hard disk, cd-rom only. SBLive, in particular, can cause problems on A7Vs... If you still have problems, you can at least narrow down the source.

5) You're not installing while overclocked, right? Don't...

6) Try a different Win2K CD and CD-ROM... maybe they don't like each other.

7) Recheck jumpers/bios settings - set everything to default settings...

8) My first IBM drive had some bad sectors on it (over 2MB), and caused me lots of problems/instabillity. I got it replaced, and haven't had any problems since. Make sure your drive is formatting w/o any bad sectors reported...

My system is pretty similar to yours, but I couldn't get my SBLive running stable at all (different problems than what you're having, though)... Take it one step at a time, and you should be able to get it working eventually. Good luck.

 

[TheFoy]

<sigh> thanks, but still nothing. I'm beginning to wonder if the mobo is broken. I set up windows in another computer on the hard drive, but when I put it back in the computer i'm building, it freezes up at the windows splash screen, giving me a blue screen that has worthless instructions on it. Damn.

 

[blammo22]

One last thing to try: in another thread, someone had problems installing Windows - their machine (TB950, I think) would freeze during installation. The fix was to underclock (!) the processor a little bit (maybe 850 or so), install Windows, and then set the clockspeed back to default. So, try underclocking your processor (using the DIPs), and see if you still have a problem. If so, it might be your CPU that's the problem.

If that doesn't fix it, I'd get the board (and maybe CPU) checked/replaced...