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I'm going to cry... :/

B

BEX

Weaksauce
Joined
May 31, 2002
Messages
91
Last upgrade was at xmas, been fine since then... then the other day I try to flash my mobo's bios. It starts flashing and I look away from the screen for 1/2 second and look back and the computer is at the post screen booting. First I was like 'wow that was fast" and then i thought "wtf it didn't say "Done, now u can reboot" or anything". But I quickly catch the it and hit del to put my settings back to how I had them. ... blah blah ... alot of stuff happens... bios is messed up somehow. Most likely, it just messed up while flashing and it was a bad flash. I rmaed it cause I didn't do anything wrong, I dunno why it failed flashing.

Since I'm computerless might as well also order a mobile2600+ and nf7=s right? So that gets here yesterday. Put it all together and turn on, my plan being to burn stuff to dvdr and format windows to start clean. Windows starts all is good and it starts automatically installing drivers, ugh and then tells me to reboot. So I say fine and reboot, windows gets to login screen and says "unable to write to c:\win" and that message pops up 50 times trying to write different things and then windows kinda hangs. Uh.... fast forward 10 minutse of trying stuff I get in safemode and burn my dvdrs.

I boot to dos fdisk kill my c: and then create a new partition there
I boot to wincd .. it loads drivers and then.. blue screens YAY "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME". Wow wtf is that huh.

HD borked? Cept I was able to safe mode fine. UDMA messed? I turn it off in bios, no difference. Try new ide cable no diff. I try using a sata converter and not even using ide controller, no diff.
Huh... harddrive just broke somehow?

Use WD test utility thing off a floppy, extended test.. HD = good.
Huh file system somehow broke? some other test program = pass.
memory maybe bad? memtest86 = good.
i can do anything in dos with no problems

I unplug the harddrive and just try to get windows boot cd not to crash... no go, blue screens every time.

I'm down to mobo+cpu+ram+videocard+dvdr
Not sure what could be broke if I can do anything in dos with no problem.

Look up the unmountable_boot_volume, microsoft says I should make sure i'm using 80pin cable (not 40) or make bios use lower udma mode... THX ... first it is a 80 pin cable, tried 2 for the hell of it, and then i tried sata- no go, bios i turned udma off and used pio = no help... then i just unplugged the hd itself and still get errors.

so what should i try... heh.

BTW
between old computer and new stuff, only common ones are
ram video dvdr
ram: memtest86 can't find an error after like 5 hours
video: why would this kill winbooting? plus i was in windows a few times first time i started new one, safe mode. tho maybe i'll try something else for fun
dvdr: tried unhooking initially and having only hd and windows login still freaked so i deleted windows... so still messed without it


Could video card do all this? Whats it have to do with writing to the harddrive?
/me looks for some old videocard in closet
 
okay quick, just put in pci video card.. no go

ram video dvdr.. ram = good, video = good, dvdr = was able to burn stuff fine looked at it on other ocmptuer = good

WTF?!Q?!?!?
 
lol okay so like if this almost made any sense...
here's one more... mandrake is installing fine bout 1/2 done


wtf is wrong with the windows cd? (tried 2 copies incase cd was bad)
 
what windows? I assume you were trying to boot from your old hd with OS already installed - if you're using XP this won't fly... when does the installation crash?
 
Yes WinXP, when booting off the cd it tells you to hit F6 to load scsi drivers if you have to and then it loads a bunch of basic drivers and then when thats done last screen says "Windows is now starting..." at the bottom of the screen.. 1/2 second later blue screens. Its right before the GUI install process starts. Its blue screening with no harddrive even connected.

Mandrake is now running fine. WinXP CD still bluescreens.

One wierd thing with mandrake.. when its loading it goes..
hdc: WD WD MODLE_OF_HD, ide harddrive
hdd: LITEON DVD-R SOME_NUMBERS, cdrom drive
cursor goes to the next line and there is a 20+ second pause (20 real seconds not exageration)
hde: no responce (status = 0xfe)
same pause
hdf: no responce (status = 0xfe)

and then it boots up fine and everything works perfect.

Why is there that huge pause? I've never had that happen before, there is no other drives why is it trying to get info from them?
 
winCD will still bluescreen without a hd connected

mandrake installs and runs fine


nm skip this thread, i've built alot of computers and never had a problem this wierd.
 
just curious but your hardrive isn't infected with any virus or spyware is it. Just wondering if its a possibility because theres a strain of very agressive virus and spyware that codes itself as windows files that cause major problems with the operating system.
 
Well tonight I just figured it all out at about 10 minutes ago... problem was actually two problems which is why nothing made sense.


(1)Old motherboard wouldn't boot right, I thought the bios was messed (although it still could have been there is a chance it wasn't).

(2)With new computer windows kept blue screening or not being able to write to harddrive and locking- attributed to not formating with new mobo

(3)Windows install cd would blue screen (with or without a HD even connected).

(4)Linux runs pefectly.

Put them together and it doesn't make sense... how can hardware work sometimes (linux) and not work others (Win Install CD).

Turns out my liteon dvdr drive is messed up somewhat, or there is an incompatiblity/bug that involves the liteon drive.

(1) might have cause the mobo not to boot anything
(2) still attribute to not formating with new mobo
(3) win install tried to use some dma mode that liteon drive didn't like
(4) linux used a different mode that was okay (dont understnad this exactly yet, just a guess)

Now wanna hear wierd part, I was watching the log file while linux booted.. had a wierd line like "AMD IDE cable error something" and that looked odd, I look it up and its a known bug in teh kernal that whose result is not using the correct dma mode (using a slower speed). So a long shot, but would be pretty funny... windows used the correct dma mode and it would die, linux used a lower setting because of the bug and would work fine.

Funny how I switched the cpu, mobo(sorta), ram, harddrive videocard.. turned off all the onboard stuff (lan sound firewire)... switched ide cables, used sata instead.. tried dma on or off.. tried 2 winxp cds, 2 win2k cds.. blah balh and the ONE thing i didn't even think could be wrong, the dvdr drive, is what caused it all. Somehwere I believe ther to be a incompatibility because the dvdr drive still can burn stuff fine.

Now I'm happy and can enjoy my mobile xp @ 2.6ghz.. just gotta get it watercooled now weeee
 
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