Reformatting & Windows XP SP2, Slipstreaming

[Niksa]

This is a windows / harddrive issue... I'm having reboot loops after upgrading to SP 2.

Here's the whole story... I was reformatting my machine:

ASUS K8V Delux Athlon64
athlon 64 Processor 3400+
1Gb PC3200 - 400MHz DDR
Maxtor 250G 7200 SATA150 8M
sound Blaster Live 5.1
windows xp pro
not OC

I used partition magic a while before reformatting and I made 2 partitions, 50 gb and 30 gb. Some time after that, I reformatting due to non-virus irregularities, sluggishness, etc (it was 2 years without a reformat or reinstall, so I figured it was "due" anyway.)

I then reformatted (not quick) and installed windows xp pro (legit copy, same as my original copy), and then I booted up. I immediately noticed my sound card wasn't detected, and when I tried to install the drivers it didn't recognize the hardware. But that's a minor problem.

I then noticed that I had only 137 gb of space on my HD where I should have 250 gb (I found a solution to this... later). At first I thought it had something to do with my old partitions so I tried to recover them (with partition table doctor) and it saw a partition but couldn't merge it. I then reformatted again (not quick) because I thought maybe I just didn't do a proper reformat, or perhaps there was an error. Redid the whole thing, installed fine, but the sound card was still having issues and the drive was still not reporting correctly.

Then I started looking around and read about XP and SP1 issues for larger HDs ( http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1026129864#post1026129864 ), so I started upgrading XP to fix that problem. I let win XP update via the start -> windows update command. It installed a few things first, SP 1, then it installed SP2. When this happened, it rebooted, hung at the black screen for a very long time (~15 minutes) then rebooted, and now it's in a reboot infinite loop, where it gets to my ASUS loading screen and then it waits for a moment and reboots. I didn't have a chance to apply the fix in the [H] thread about 137 gb harddrives before it started this rebooting cycle.

My BIOS is set to load from CD then Floppy then C. The problem is, my boot disk got snapped when I moved (I know, I'm not happy about it either) and it's not loading the Windows XP cd when I have it in. It just keeps rebooting. I have another boot disk that lets me get to a dos prompt, but when I try to cd C: it says something like, "C: is not responding."

So, any advice? Thanks for any suggestions...

 

[ktwebb]

Linked post aside I am not aware of any issue with XP and partition size. I've certainly partitioned large drives before however as a general rule I like to break up the partitions into manageable sizes anyway. Defragmentation and so forth.

Just boot to the CD and reload. You keep talking about refomatting. Ok, that's fine. repartition during the installation. Beyond the root drive of C: you don't really need to format anyway. Or partition for that matter. You can do that in windows. So boot to the CD, delete your existing partitions and create a new one for the windows installation. Typically you don't want to put anything on that partition but windows anyway so 10-12GB is more than enough. Format that drive during install. Quick format is fine. I don't think I've ever not done a quick format and I've loaded XP more than 100 times for various people/jobs.

Then when you get windows up go the manage snap in, disk manager, and partition till your hearts desire. Sounds like your making this much harder than it is.