I'm almost stomped... anyone have any input...

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Korgun

Supreme [H]ardness
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Well for various reasons (one being constant random blue screens) I decided to format and reinstall windows last night.

So I open up the box, disconnect all storage drives put in the windows installation CD and start, use the usual settings after it's done copying files it blue screens.... so I shut down and retry the whole thing again, and blue screen after the copying files portion again...

First test, memory.... ran memtest86 and it had an error on test 4. I took out both sticks and one of the gold connectors on one of the sticks looked burned. so I put that aside inspected the other one and put it back in the system. Started the windows installation and crashed in the same spot.... so I thought maybe I put the memory in the slot that the burned stick was in so I put it in the other spot and ran memtest86 and it passed 4 full test passes....started windows installation... blue screen in the same spot.

Second test, hard drive - made a wd diag tool CD and did a quick scan - no errors, did a full scan - no errors.

Third test, one of the PCI devices... i took out all PCI devices.... try again and blue screen on the same spot once again....

Fourth test, video card - so I switched video cards with my bro's comp.... try to install again and once again blue screen in the same spot.

At this point the only thing i can think of doing is taking everything out of the system and trying the install as bare as possible... any thing you guys suggest?

Specs:
Antec NeoPower 480 PSU
Asus A8V Deluxe w/ 1014 bios
AMD x2 3800
1 (1 bad) CMX512 3200C2 512MB
nVidia 6800GT - (both mine and my bro's)
WD 74GB Raptor
 
This is a fairly common problem with XP installs on blazing fast systems and you'll likely get all kinds of useless advice about bad/dirty/scratched CDs, bad MOBOs, bad CD-RW/DVD drives. It is such a common problem, how could so many people have brand new CDs that are scratched?

Get yourself an crappy old 8X or 16X (slow) CDROM drive with a 40 wire cable and plug it in; see if you can install XP with it. If that doesn't work, turn off UDMA mode for the drive in BIOS (remember to turn it back on when done).
 
I noticed you have a WD hard drive. For some reason those drives are VERY picky about their master/slave settings. You said that you disconnected all your storage drives so that means this 74 raptor is your only drive currently yes? If so you need to pull the jumper off the drive to make the system think its the only one. Even though the jumper is on as master it still can cause a lot of problems like others have experienced (including myself). Hope thats helps, good luck!
 
Frank4d said:
This is a fairly common problem with XP installs on blazing fast systems and you'll likely get all kinds of useless advice about bad/dirty/scratched CDs, bad MOBOs, bad CD-RW/DVD drives. It is such a common problem, how could so many people have brand new CDs that are scratched?

Get yourself an crappy old 8X or 16X (slow) CDROM drive with a 40 wire cable and plug it in; see if you can install XP with it. If that doesn't work, turn off UDMA mode for the drive in BIOS (remember to turn it back on when done).
Click to expand...

I have installed off the same CD and same drive before... but your idea isn't bad, i'm going to use my other drive to install and see if that works... thanks

That_Sound_Guy said:
I noticed you have a WD hard drive. For some reason those drives are VERY picky about their master/slave settings. You said that you disconnected all your storage drives so that means this 74 raptor is your only drive currently yes? If so you need to pull the jumper off the drive to make the system think its the only one. Even though the jumper is on as master it still can cause a lot of problems like others have experienced (including myself). Hope thats helps, good luck!
Click to expand...

This drive is a SATA drive, and i left jumpers on whatever they were the day i got it... and i have installed windows with the same drive config in the same comp numerous times before with no problems... :(
 
I actually had the same problem. My install either blue screened or said that my cd was missing files. 3 different cds. I just kept trying and eventually it worked.
 
well took out the mobo out of the system and connect it on a cardboard box with oly processor, processor cooling, floppy, video card, memory and same hard drive, blue screen,
tried switching memory to another bank same thing
tried a third video card same thing
tried a regular IDE hard drive same thing
tried another optical drive same thing
tried 4 seperate windows install CD's (with various SP slipstreams) same thing
tried re-seating the processor and cooling same thing

at this point the only thing i can think is either the mobo or processor are damaged... unless someone suggests something else i'm going to try to RMA the mobo tomorrow

in the mean time i'm going to install my NF7-S and 3200+ xp barton.... yaay
 
Sigh... RMAed the mobo and guess what... same exact thing....

The only thing left is the processor and I've never had a dead processor... the sad part is I never overclocked on this setup

this is just too bizzare
 
Ok, I don't think I missed this, but if someone already said it...sorry.

SATA drivers anyone?? Did you hit F6 and install that floppy disk w/ the SATA drivers prior to installing Windows XP on your Raptor? Even if the drive isn't in RAID you still should install that SATA driver. I'd put money on that fixing it. Good luck and let me know.
 
I'm using the same SATA driver disk i've used since i first got this mobo - but i did make driver disks from their driver download site and from the original CD that came with the mobo to the same result

Also, it does the same thing on SATA and on IDE. :(
 
Darn, I guess I just lost some $$$ ;).

Silly question, but you don't happen to know what the blue screen says do you?

Aside from that, the only other place I'd look is the BIOS for memory timings, or HTT/CPU settings. Sorry to hear you're having that issue though.
 
irq not less than or equal

bunch of text saying call admin

and then something that looks like a memotry address... i wrote it down twice and both times it had a different address though

I called up asus and told them the new mobo didn't fix the problem and they esclated me to tier 2 tech support and that guy said "hmm then it must be your processor call AMD" and so i did...

you know for such a big company i'm really surprised AMD doesn't have advance RMA... i'm gonna ship it tomorrow and after they get it the rep said they test (which can take up to 48 hours apparently) ugh... so yeah i'll be on my old setup for a while longer...

man i miss having 2 cores.... multitasking suffers immensely...
 
Korgun said:
At this point the only thing i can think of doing is taking everything out of the system and trying the install as bare as possible... any thing you guys suggest?

Specs:
Antec NeoPower 480 PSU
Asus A8V Deluxe w/ 1014 bios
AMD x2 3800
1 (1 bad) CMX512 3200C2 512MB
nVidia 6800GT - (both mine and my bro's)
WD 74GB Raptor
Click to expand...


Something is bad. Everytime I have ever seen this, one part or another had a failure. Usually it's memory or motherboard, but could be something as simple as overheated power supply connector pins (clean them with electronic contact cleaner)

If you said one of your memory sticks had a darkend contact, it's a sign it has overheated and possibly damaged some of the circuitry on the systemboard.

You should really try to clean every contact you can get to and go from there.
 
_Durandal_ said:
Just out of curiosity, what were the numbers though? 0x00...???
Click to expand...


I threw that sheet out :(

The first section was all 0's but the rest were not
 
I had this problem too on an older PC, couldn't figure out what caused it. What I ended up doing was getting another hard drive (or partitioning the one that's in there at the moment if you don't have a spare) and copying every single file/folder off the XP setup disk into the root of that partition/hard drive, navigating to the "I386" directory, and running one of the executables in there. I can't remember what it was, though! Either "WINNT.EXE", "USETUP.EXE" or "NTDETECT.COM". It's one of those, though, I'm fairly sure.
Either way, that fixed the problem I had. XP installed fine after that.

Edit: You can't use a SATA drive as the drive to copy files off if the XP installation requires drivers at the F6 prompt. Seeing as you have an A8V, and it uses VIA chipsets K8M800 and VT8251 (I think) you should be okay as long as you have a SATA drive on the integrated controller (i.e. the ones on the SouthBridge).
I think. It's been a while since I worked on a VIA chipset.
 
One of my friends had a problem like this...

Why dont you try UNDERCLOCKING your processor. He had an XP3200+ that would bluescreen during install so he underclocked it and it worked fine. Also, did you try the post about using an old CDrom?

Try using a completely different Windows cd if that doesnt work. I had a WindowsXP cd I downloaded from the college my Dad worked at that would not install into one of my systems... no matter how many times I downloaded/burned with different service packs and such. I ended up borrowing a retail WindowsXP cd and it worked fine.

Also, I didnt read everything here, so:
Have you tried flashing to your newest bios?
Most of the motherboards Ive owned have some settings along the lines of "Select optimized defaults" and "Select failsafe defaults"... select the failsafe defaults if you have it and try then. If it doesnt work after that, then it definitly is not your motherboard if you have just gotten a new one.

Have access to another computer that can use the ram you have? Slap your ram in that computer and mem-test it... if it fails in a computer you know to be working then you have ram problems.

Try to use DIFFERENT SATA cables, borrow some if you have to. Ive had bad cables cause problems before... although Ive never had cables "go bad" if you have been using those along time.
 
banGerprawN said:
I had this problem too on an older PC, couldn't figure out what caused it. What I ended up doing was getting another hard drive (or partitioning the one that's in there at the moment if you don't have a spare) and copying every single file/folder off the XP setup disk into the root of that partition/hard drive, navigating to the "I386" directory, and running one of the executables in there. I can't remember what it was, though! Either "WINNT.EXE", "USETUP.EXE" or "NTDETECT.COM". It's one of those, though, I'm fairly sure.
Either way, that fixed the problem I had. XP installed fine after that.

Edit: You can't use a SATA drive as the drive to copy files off if the XP installation requires drivers at the F6 prompt. Seeing as you have an A8V, and it uses VIA chipsets K8M800 and VT8251 (I think) you should be okay as long as you have a SATA drive on the integrated controller (i.e. the ones on the SouthBridge).
I think. It's been a while since I worked on a VIA chipset.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's a SATA or drive issue - i've tried using a regular IDE drive and a SATA drive.... they both do the same thing.

Tengis said:
One of my friends had a problem like this...

Why dont you try UNDERCLOCKING your processor. He had an XP3200+ that would bluescreen during install so he underclocked it and it worked fine. Also, did you try the post about using an old CDrom?

Try using a completely different Windows cd if that doesnt work. I had a WindowsXP cd I downloaded from the college my Dad worked at that would not install into one of my systems... no matter how many times I downloaded/burned with different service packs and such. I ended up borrowing a retail WindowsXP cd and it worked fine.

Also, I didnt read everything here, so:
Have you tried flashing to your newest bios?
Most of the motherboards Ive owned have some settings along the lines of "Select optimized defaults" and "Select failsafe defaults"... select the failsafe defaults if you have it and try then. If it doesnt work after that, then it definitly is not your motherboard if you have just gotten a new one.

Have access to another computer that can use the ram you have? Slap your ram in that computer and mem-test it... if it fails in a computer you know to be working then you have ram problems.

Try to use DIFFERENT SATA cables, borrow some if you have to. Ive had bad cables cause problems before... although Ive never had cables "go bad" if you have been using those along time.
Click to expand...
I"ve tried everything you mentioned except for underclocking the processor.

Well the processor shipped to AMD so there isn't much i can do, once they test it we'll see what happens...
 
Korgun said:
I don't think it's a SATA or drive issue - i've tried using a regular IDE drive and a SATA drive.... they both do the same thing.
Click to expand...
I was suggesting doing an install from hard drive, not from CD...Nothing to do with an issue involving SATA or you're drive.
 
banGerprawN said:
I was suggesting doing an install from hard drive, not from CD...Nothing to do with an issue involving SATA or you're drive.
Click to expand...

oic... sorry about that

btw just a general update to the thread i RMAed the processor and AMD said they stress tested it for 14 hours and it passed all their tests... and they are going to send back the processor i sent them....

Now i'm not quite sure what i'm going to do when it comes back.... sigh...
 
First off, Happy Thanksgiving :D. Now, for the important stuff. You said it blue screens regardless of using a SATA or an IDE drive. My question is, does that IDE drive connect to some kind of RAID controller on the motherboard? I only ask because that too might need a driver, which would explain why it also blue screens...

If that is not the case, I read that you tried re-seating the heatsink. What temperatures are we talking about for your CPU? Most importantly, I need that error message. If necessary, install Windows and write it down again! That is by far the most important part to identifying this problem. I need the 0x00...whatever it is...in fact, post the whole dang thing if you can.

Lastly, here's the only other thing I'd recommend for now:

1) Up the memory voltage by .1 just while you install windows
2) Relax the timings as far as they'll go. i.e If your memory runs at 3-2-3-8 try 3-4-4-8 (or something like that...you get the idea).

There have only been two times that I've gotten an IRQ is Less Than or Equal (Stop Errors, which I'll assume you're also receiving)...The first time my Mushkin memory (one stick anyhow) went bad. The second time is when my TV Tuner exits after a record. However, an IRQ Less Than or Equal is generally a hardware issue, and most commonly RAM

I stole this from an Experts Exchange website:

This is hardware error.

BCCode : a BCP1 : 00000054 BCP2 : 0000001C BCP3 : 00000001 BCP4 : 804E1630

BCP2 is the IRQL. IRQL x'1c' is timer IRQL. It implies it is hardware error. Most probably it is faulty CPU or RAM. According to my record. I have 14 confirmed case of system crash x'1c', 6 is CPU, 5 is RAM. 2 is M/B and 1 overheat.

Refer the following case and they are all crashed at IRQL x'1c'
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21306911.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinNT/Q_21361736.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Ope...245.html?query=bugcheck+0x0000000a&topics=231
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinNT/Q_21419604.html
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/WinXP/Q_21222403.html

Edit: I noticed that the above links apparently only show you the first part of the discussion. What you can do is a search for IRQ...on Google and it should come up with the same results...then use Google's "Cached Web Page" to view it to get around their blocking of the whole thread.

For general BSOD error messages, visit here: http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php
 
Thanks for the links & tips _Durandal_, I noted them down incase I need them.

A final update to the thread, I called up AMD and explained my situation and that I had tried replacements for all hardware except processor and since they are sending the original processor back I asked for their feedback onwhat could cause this problem. The guy put me on hold and when he came back said that they decided to ship a new processor out to me.

I received the replacement processor on Friday and installed it bare with a pen and paper ready to note the BSOD down incase it happens and it didn't.... so I've been installing all my apps and such since then :) A part of me was wishing the system would BSOD again and when I look up the error code I would think "How could I be such an idiot - obviously it is ________" but now I guess something was bad with that processor.

Thanks for the help.
 
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