Cannot install Win2k

[condor]

okay here's the deal:

although I havea nother post on a DFI mobo in the mobo's section this is a different mobo of a friend (why do people buy DFI ? )

He was running Win2k (sp1) upto last week when he started to have problems.. (hangs, BSoDs, apps illegal..) so he decided to format..

now this is the fun part -

he cannot install win2k (not a regualr cd nor the one I gave him to try with sp2 integrated..)

everytime the setup stops somewhere saying a file cannot be copied (different files each time) some of the times he gets BSOD's on NTFS or others..

after he called me I told him to remove RAM and leave it with only 256MB that works and also to remove all the cards and install only with mobo,vga, hdd and Cd.

still no go..

so I went there this evening.
his config (now without any other parts)
Intel P-III 450+fan (no heat problem.)
DFI P2XBL/e Rev.A mobo (slot1) i440BX latest BIOS
512MB PC-100 RAM 3 DIMMS 2x128, 1x256 (tried
a few other DIMMS)
Quantum 20GB HDD
Toshiba DVD (tried a different CD-ROM with PIO and not DMA)
3d labs Oxygen VX1

now I'm pretty sure it's the IDE controller that died but I will go there tomorrow with some new RAM and another Graphics card to check it out.

now rember this computer was running win2k so it is compatible with it..
the only recent hardware changes were adding RAM (but we checked it without the new RAM) and removing a U.S.R 56KBps ISA modem (but problems started before)

if the new RAM and grphics card won't help I'm going to assume I have a nother dead DFI mobo..

but since it's always a good idea to get a fresh point of view - is there anything I'm missing, any ideas ?

tia for all the help ..

[AlienDyne]

No Condor. I don't thing you're missing anything. I would check some other RAM modules first, if I were you.

Good luck!

[Captain_Kirk]

Here's a question. Have you removed and recreated the partition on the HDD already? I would try that, also make sure the BIOS is set to PNP OS = YES (Obvious I know) I would also try another cdrom drive. (If these fail) Seen that before with a system I was working with. <IMG SRC="smilies/biggrin.gif" border="0">

[fair64]

I have had a similar problem installing windows 2000, mine was fixed by going into the bios and loading default settings.

[CampbellD]

Captain Kirk,

I think that you're on the right track. Remoning the partitions of where W2K was installed last is esential. I would actually go further and fdisk totally and start from scratch. The Partition info may still be their from the last install and causing the problems. If the system run W2K, and you were getting illegal operations the problem could be RAM, So please cange with a known good stick of RAM.

Hope this helps

[Ferris]

i had identical installation errors, my PC had 2x PC133 128MB's and 1x PC100 64MB. i removed the 64MB and it helped, although it didn't completely solve the prob. i was able to copy around 95% of the files in installation, as opposed to around 50% before. i also upgraded to the latest mobo bios which maybe helped matters.

the 5% i missed, i took a note of their names and locations in my laptop win2k, copied them to floppy from my good laptop win2k, and loaded them into the relevant win2k folders on my problem box, via a Win98 partition on the same PC.

[Ron Prestenback]

It's look you have most all the bases covered Condor. Heres's a couple more things to look over: Have you tried another hard drive? You may at least want to format the drive FAT32 and run dos scandisk on it to check for bad sectors. You may also run win2K chkdsk from the repair console to check errors with it formatted NTFS. Another idea I had was to make sure the drive doesn't need some sort of software from the manufacturer. I haven't known Quantum's to need this, but I know alot of seagate's and Western Digital's have programs that come with the drive to enable various things (logical block addressing, etc.) And also try installing with APCI turned off (or on if it's turned off). Hope this helps! Good Luck!

[condor]

first thanks for all the advise - I didn't have any chacne to read it before I went there but read to see the conclusion...

I went there to check it myself..

he did format the HDD every time with the installs..

I used Simmtester and found that he does have bad RAM ..

got him a good kingston DIMMs instaed - the installtion still failed..

So I got my trusted Aefdisk , removed all partitions and the restored the mbr than reinstalled windows (all the cards were still outside)

this time installtion succeeded, I plugged in one card at a time to make sure all is working well...

top make a long story short he is now working again <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">

two things - the removing of partitions was a good solution - too bad it wouldn't help if the RAM is bad - but once a good RAM has been installed that did the trick..

another thing I noticed is that his VGA card gets reaally hot, now I'm not expert on VX1 so I son't know how hot they are made to run but it seemed too hot - a quick visit to RadioShack and a 486 Cpu cooler did the trick <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">

thanks again for all the help.

This just goes to prove that even "tech gods" can benefit from "non tech-gods" and although I did get to the solution by myself if I had time to read this post before it would have helped..

so keep on the good job guys


P.S
Ron - I was thinking on a curropted HDD too and I tried FAT32 and NTFS. as for ACPI the board doesn't use it correctly so It's turned off..

but those are very good ideas for future reference, thanks

[Ron Prestenback]

A few things to mention for general reference....
Condor: When your friend formatted the hard drive after getting those errors (which we now know was actually due to bad RAM), this is what corrupted the MBR. If you format with bad RAM, you will almost always get a bad partition. Same goes for defragmenting, scandisk /repair....anything that edits the MBR basically. This kinda goes without saying. Also, you can use Win2000's Recovery Console to correct the MBR. The two commands for this are fixboot and fixmbr. These can only be run from the Recovery Console upon booting up the system from the CD.

Ferris: I would get a good memory testing program and test the memory you were using when you installed. If setup can't copy files, there are only 3 real possibilities - memory, bad media, and bad CDROM drive/controller. In the case of bad memory, you would find that you have problems in Win2K Installation, but no problems in Win98. I suppose because of more intensive and dynamic use of resources in Win2K, it suffers more from bad memory that Win98 does. I am also curious as to how long the "stubborn" Win2K installation has been up, and whether you've had any other problems since then.