Windows installed fine, but RAM-MB killing me.

[OatMan]

OK, I'm kinda stumped on this one.

Keep getting error message saying the following file is corrupted/missing pease reinstall.
<windows 2000 root>/system32/ntoskrnl.exe

Have three different WinXP install CDs and have used two different CD/DVD drives.

I tried master/slave and cable select. I've stripped hardware to the bare. I've twiddled anything I can find in the BIOS.

doesn't make sense. I have built like a million machines with these disks and never had this problem before so what are the chances ALL THREE suddenly have the same corrupted file?

The drives show in the BIOS check.
Boot order CDROM first Check.
quadruple checked the master slave cable select jumpers check.

stood on left leg while booting check.

do need an 8 ball and wedja board?

TIA

EDIT adding Hardware Specs:
AMD 3500+ 939 w/retail HSF
Gigabyte K8N-SC 939 (Nforce 3 250)
Antec Smartpower v2 350w
Evga 7600 GS (AGP)
God knows what generic RAM 2x512MB DDR 400
no floppy
NEC DVDr/CDr
IDE HDD du jour

EDIT2 - changed title as this is now morphed into dan pays price for trying to work with ****** components. in my defence I inherited this from someone else when i upgraded him to good stuff-no good deed goes unpunnished

 

[loafbred]

Have you tried to install the OS with that HDD installed in another machine? I had one of three identical nForce2 machines, which I built for my boss, fail to load XP once. I wasted a lot of time trying different floppy drives, disks and driver versions to load SATA driver. It would install very slowly, then fail at different points. I thoroughly stability tested it, then put that HDD in my own machine and installed his XP on the drive without incident. Got a replacement motherboard and problem was solved.

 

[hoorah]

I had that same problem on a dell system with a customer (sort of) of mine. Tried lotsa disks, used the dell diagnostic on the drives, all came back good. Same corruption message. Never did figure it out for sure, but my best guess was a bad IDE channel.

 

[Trader05]

i had this problem before, run memtest for your ram. My friend had a bad stick and it would almost 1/4 of the install and come up with disc reading errors.

 

[dbailey]

Make sure your heatsink is tight on the cpu.. when your installing xp.. if the processor overheats, you will generally find these kind of errors.

 

[Sforsyth]

I've had bad ram before and it coused this to do the same thing

 

[John]

Can you complete 2 passes of Memtest86+?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=28&threadid=1901991&enterthread=y

 

[n7]

Yup, i bet you it's RAM also.

 

[OatMan]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. It very well might be the ram actually. This was salvaged from a machine that shorted out and died.

Here's the hardware I should have included in the original POST
AMD 3500+ 939
Gigabyte K8N-SC 939 (Nforce 3 250)
Antec Smartpower v2 350w
Evga 7600 GS (AGP)
God knows what generic RAM 2x512MB DDR 400
no floppy
NEC DVDr/CDr
IDE HDD du jour

I got it to go finally. I still can't isolate the issue though.

I swapped out the HDD with one I have tested in other machines.
I added a second IDE cable and put the optical and HDD on seperate IDE channels
I swapped out the wireless kbrd+mouse for wired ones.

Finally it booted and loaded windows as expected with no incidents. I knew the cpu was ok as I checked temps in the BIOS. THis is a brand new replacement board from gigabyte FWIW. Too many variables to say...

One thing I thought was the PSU might be on the weak side. But an Antec smartpower atx2.0 350w should be OK for a single core 3500+ shouldn't it?

The odd thing that may just be coincidental was that the wireless kbrd worked to go into the BIOS, and it worked once it booted to windows (I had an old HDD with an existing build) but when it pops the "Press any key to boot from CD" message it seemed not to be accepting my key stroke.

So I was wondering if there is some transition in the boot process where it doesn't matter if the BIOS knows to use a USB keyboard but before windows has booted (right around HDD but after POST). Anyway this is just my speculation and was why I tried swapping out the wireless keyboard.

I will test the ram for sure though, I should have thought of that. I even have a set of tester RAM that I totally forgot to swap in. Thats what I get for working well after midnight

 

[OatMan]

This thing is STILL doing some wierd ******, which usually means something is buggered, likely the MB...

Anyway testing the RAM:
1 Two 512MB sticks of Aeneon generic crap PC3200
2. 2x256MB Mushy LVL two BH-5 PC3500
3. One stick of Team eXtream PC4000 (Micron)

Sockets 1+2 or 3+4 give dual channel

Sockt one will only run the Team Micron stick without errors (this stick I KNOW is good)
So I go to try 2+3
Socket 3 will not give a video signal with any RAM except one of the two Aeneon sticks. Which runs without errors. No VID with any other stick.
Socket 4 the stick of Aeneon that is clean in socket 3 gives tons of errors in socket 4.

WTF? I can only guess that their is compatibility issues, but even so I don't understand why their would be a compatibility issue in one socket but not another unless their is also another variable. I'm thinking I have to RMA this board AGAIN.

I stopped clearing the CMOS between every RAM change as it seemed to be making no difference. I am also trying to test each RAM stick individually on another board, but the only other board I have is the DFI - Expert in my main rig which is VERY picky about RAM, so I don't know if that will really tell me much.

advice appreciated, thanks!

 

[Thor86]

Is the latest version bios on this motherboard?

Also, in the bios settings for memory, is there a stable default spd timings setting?

 

[Seekermeister]

I wish that I had somelthing useful to say, but I had several MBs of that model, and I had to return them to the store, because of problems with them. I really can't remember, but doesn't it specify which slots must be used first?

 

[Sforsyth]

I have 2 Nforce 2 MOBO's and they are extremely picky about ram I put in them, I would suguest using only one stik of ram.

 

[OatMan]

Thanks for the suggestions. It has the latest BIOS. I tried 5 different sticks of RAM one at a timein all 4 slots. It is a combination of picky and bad RAM, so it was impossible to work out what was going on without methodical trial and error. I'm worried about buying RAM only to find it not compatible. The support at gigabyte is awful and they don't respond to emails.

oh well I'll guess I'll just have to slog through it, what a hassle.

Thanks again all.