trouble loading XP Home

Guys,

Building a PC for a friend (something I will never do again) and am having trouble getting the OS to load. The best I can do right now is get to the past the point where Windows loads a bund of files and then, sometimes, gets to the Windows Setup screen. When I press enter for Windows setup selection I expect the next screen to be a Windows license agreement screen and then a format option screen. Instead, I keep rebooting and see the BIOS screen present itself and then go back into the initial Windows file load screen.

It's all very confusing, so far I've reset BIOS to make sure the CD drive is the primary screen and have checked that the HD is plugged to SATA port 1 (primary - though this shouldn't matter since it's a one drive system). And, yes, CMOS checks out as showing the floppy, HD and DVD as in place.

I've turned the machine off and on many times and no luck - can't even guess what the issue is here.

The machine is a Pentium D 2.8 mated to an Asus P5L MX; both the HD and DVD are SATA.

Any thoughts here?

Tom

 

Sounds like you need to install the SATA/RAID drivers during the XP installation (Press F6 when presented). The drivers should be located on the motherboard CD and will need to be copied to a floppy disk. Read the motherboard manual.

 

I really did read the manual, but admit I'm still new to this. When it asks me to hit F6 it does so with regards to SCSI and RAID set-up, not SATA.

For grins, I put in the Asus CD and reboot, now I get
Loading FreeDOS FAT KERNEL GO!
Press any key to boo from CDROM

Booting from C:.... OK!

I really don't know what this means....

 

That should be that the SATA driver is loading - and the OS installation should proceed from there. If it doesn't, then let us know and we'll work with it.

 

I hate to say this, but I think I made things worse. Maybe that was a SATA driver load, but now, neither the Windows CD nor the Asus CD seems to be recognized. The best I can get is a cyclical boot through BIOS, but nothing else.

I even went back to settting the boot priorities back to 1 - floppy 2- HD 3 - DVD and nothing. I'm also changing the SATA connections to various configurations (i.e. master/master; master;slave) and nothing.

 

You know, I've been checking the manual and the Internet and I don't see anything about making SATA driver floppies.

I wonder if the motherboard or some other component could be faulty. Although I really don't believe this is the case here, plus everything checks out okay in BIOS.

As for SATA master/slave, believe it or not the manual does say to put the HD in SATA slot 1 or 2 which I've been doing. Speaking of which I kinda thought SATA was more or less "plug and play" these days, especially on a new 945 series chipset that clearly has a SATA bias.

I'm getting tired here, so I think it's time to break off the attack.

If I knew it was going to be like this, I woulda told my buddy to by a Dell

 

Tom, it appears that there is some confusion here - there is (as Pete says), no such setting available on a SATA drive. And, although I didn't follow Arie's link, if you don't or can't find drivers by following it, there is a utility on your ASUS motherboard CD for making the necessary floppy disks to install your SATA drivers following an F6 prompt in the installation routine.

Go slow and good luck.

 

So, from what I'm reading so far, it's Windows (Microsoft) causing the problem in so much that the OS can't work with SATA drives without new drivers.

Would be nice if MS made things a little more up to date out of the box; it's not like SATA came out yesterday.

My sisters has a younger friend who's in school for this kind of stuff; going to try to get some hands on assistance.

 

Newer SATA drives do have jumpers on them (I saw them on a Western Digital or Seagate drive at work the other day) - but they're not marked the same as IDE drives.

My Intel 975x chipset still asked for SATA drivers - with both XP and Vista

 

Ugh!!! Now that's surprising! So much for plug and play.

 

Guys,

The HD in question is a Western Digital Caviar SE WD1600JS 160Gb model. After discussing with my sisters friend I mentioned I started searching the WD website. Would this link be the SATA drivers? Pretty sure this is it, but not 100%sure?

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=15&swid=9

Even if so, hope the strange message I recieved from the Asus CD doesn't mean I'll have a problem going forward (software conflict and such).

Im also going to pop the Asus CD into an operating computer and see if there aren't onboard driver creation utilities.

 

Computer Health

Sounds like a hardware problem.
Make sure the cards are seated properly and the ram is in tight.
Power supply ? Try substituting another power supply temporarily.
If not take out the cards, unattach the peripheals and add one at a time. Turn on. See if the reboots continue.
It is a matter of diagnosis .
Something is making the computer reboot ?
Heat ? Check dust and the fans including cpu fan is working.
You can check heat of cpu and motherboard in the bios some of the time if the computer will stay on and not reboot.

 

I kinda doubt it's hardware, but don't discount it completely. It is a very basic, new build.
Asus P5L MX micro ATX (Intel 945g)
Pentium D 2.8 (915 Presler)
WD 160 gig HD
Samsung DVD recorder
Samsung floppy
Corsair Value Select 1 gig stick (DDR2 667 - 5300)
PC Power and Cooling 360 watts

In BIOS everything is indeed recognized, so I've got that going for me. CPU temps and Power supply voltages seem to be fine. If I'm suspicious of anything, it's would be the MB, if only because it did get some shaky reviews on Newegg (though it got lots of 5 star reviews)

I'm hoping the SATA drivers are the issue, but won't be able to get back to it till at least tommorow.

 

Fair enough, but I mean, really.... couldn't MS put something into the newly minted DVDs of fresh software? Would've thought this was in SP1 at least.

Maybe it's a technical issue and MS can't do so. Or maybe it's that they're a giant monopoloy and just don't care

Hoping to get back to this thing tonight. Would be great if someone could confirm the link I found on the Western Digital site.

Oh yeah, in my defense, I was re-reading my copy of Maximum PCs "Build your own gaming rig for $1500" and no where does it talk about loading SATA drivers. I think this is what led me to believe they aren't necessary anymore. I wonder if they had to do so and it just wasn't mentioned or maybe they just assumed everybody (but me) knew this was necesarry.

 

Guys:

I finally got to check the Asus CD and the only thing I can find that seems to make sense is under the "Make Disk" tab:

The options are:
Make Intel ICH7 32bit RAID Driver Disk
Make Intel ICH7 64bit RAID Driver Disk
Make ITE8211 32/64bit IDE Driver Disk

Nothing seems to jump out and say "SATA disk here" but I was wondering if the last one might be the one to use.

 

Sounds like you fit into that prestigious 99th percentile. For those so inclined to wager, would it be the high end or the low one?