XP Installation problem

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Freemanator

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Sep 6, 2005
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Sorry if this is in the wrong area, but it seemed the best one.

I have built a new system in an Antec Sonata II Case. It is an AMD X2 4200+ in an ECS KN1 SLi Lite, with 1 stick (1 Gig) from a matched pair of Corsair RAM. There is a Maxtor 200 Gig SATA Hard drive, a X-Fi Fata1ty sound card, and a DVD writer and a DVD reader.
Since having the problems i put in an 80 gig IDE HD, in case the SATA HD was the problem.

What happens is i boot from the XP Home SP2 CD and get to the bit where it says, hit enter to install windows, r to repair windows or esc to quit setup. Here it seems to freeze, as whatever i press nothing changes, although when i hit enter you here some increased activity from the DVD drive.

Any suggestions please?

Thanks in advance!
 
I get to that part and it lets me hit enter and then it says it cant find my HD. But the HD is listed in the bios. I even went and bought a new WD IDE HD to test it and that one doesnt work either. I don't know if our problems are the same but in any case. I can't install XP either. I am using the A8N32-SLI. It also won't detect internal CD-rom drives but thats another issue.
 
if you are using the raid controller with the A8N32-SLI then youll need to download the driver for it from the nvidea site, and then hit F6 at the begining of the setup when it says to push F6 if you need to install a 3rd party driver, otherwise it will say that it can not detect any hard drives, the A8N32-SLI doesnt come with a disk like normal mobos :mad:
 
Dumb question: you are booting from the CD in Bios, right???? Maybe the optical drive cant read the XP disc???? Id swap that out, too and try again.

Ive never encountered that problem. No you dont need to install RAID drivers for a single IDE HD.
 
You definately dont need to install anything for the ide drive...

First off if your getting to the install /r/ escape screen then we know it sees the disk...I would recommend that you make sure the bios is updated and that you install it with only the 1 ide hdd and 1 optical drive connected...or only the 1 sata drive and 1 optical.. MAKE sure to have the sata drivers available on a floppy if needed..
 
Then I guess updating my bios is the only option. When I startup with my new WD hard drive as a master it freezes my system on the bios splashscreen (it has been formatted to NTSC with no change) but just started doing that after I tried a few dif configurations. When I use my old WD HD it boots up fine until the "Press enter to install windows" then it gives an error, sometimes bluescreen and sometimes it says there is no HD. When I use the old HD as a master and the new one as a slave then they both work in bios but still the same problem upon trying to install windows.

I have tried moving ram around. Reformatting the drives. Booting from floppy and cd xp disks. Using secondary IDE cables. Different Primary IDE cables. I also tried an old maxtor HD and it reads in bios and also won't let XP install. My old HD had XP on it already but it wouldnt load it up off the HD. Just says "insert bootable drive or device" something along that line anytime I try and boot from a HD.

At the end of the XP load before the menu screen to install or repair. I am getting a unexpected error about something in a windows xp base fold... can't read the rest because it gets cut off. Then I press a button and it loads the menu. I don't know if this is the problem but it happens with all 3 methods of my install. I have 2 different XP disks and I also tried floppy boot disks. All of them give this error.

I am trying to get through to tech support cause I'm about ready to RMA this board. I have spent probably around 15 to 20 hours on this comp so far and am stuck at this brick wall. Last 8 hours have been with this install program.

Please help if you can.
 
Are you sure the disc (XPSP2) quality is ok? It could be scratched, or slipstreamed improperly or the cd drive could be bad as well.

Also make sure you have no USB or firewire drives attached.
 
Well I have tried 2 dif windows xp disks so I don't think that is the problem. One is scratched to hell but the other has worked fine on other comps. I should also mention that although it detects the drives in the bios it says that they are 0 megs large on the bios screen. That is with the 2 WD drives. The Maxtor however did say a file size? But I couldnt install on that drive either. This is very confusing problem.
 
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