Inaccessible Boot Device.

Question on driver issue possibility

When I have made a tweak to my system, I have been testing it by simply seeing if the slipstream install cd with sp2 will boot to the install options, because that is the easiest and quickest way to test.

Now in the past, I have also tried just installing sp2 directly, either by download, or using the file I made the slipstream cd with. But when I do that and each time it didn't work, I then have to go back and do a repair install with the sp1a cd and get it all going again. It is a long process, so I tend not to want to do that, and I just try the install cd with sp2 to see if it will boot.

Okay, when I tried installing sp2 directly, I have tried it with and without installing all the drivers for this board. And when I reboot after running or download sp2, I get the bsod and it just reboots over and over. And yet those drivers were present and in use by the sp1a installation. Did the installation of sp2 take them out or ignore them. Thats what makes me wonder whether it is a driver issue. I get to thinking it is a driver issue, then I remember I had those drivers installed when I tried to put in sp2 from the file or downloading.

I may test this again this weekend, when I have more time, in case it doesn't work.

Wayne.

 

Tried installing sp2 again

On the assumption that its a driver problem....
All the drivers for everything are there and running under the sp1a installation. Some are more up to date than when I first tried to directly install the sp2 file. They all now are the very latest available. So I thought maybe it would work now, and that the install cd simply blows up because it doesn't have the drivers.

Well I just installed the sp2 file that I downloaded to make the slipstream cd. It again halted on an error during performing cleanup. It sent an error report.

So then I rebooted. Same problem. Get a fast moving bsod, then reboot. Same thing over and over. I'll have to do a repair install again with the sp1a cd.

I may just go out and buy a Sata drive tomorrow. If that doesn't do it, I don't know what will. If it works, I can only assume that something about sp2 won't let it see the ide controller, or won't let it see it as the boot controller. Or maybe something about the board makes it see it that way. But my old motherboard had Sata capability as well and sp2 ran fine then.

Wayne.

 

Wayne:

I don't have anything earth-shatteringly new for you but I agree with your thinking. If it were me, I'd spring for the SATA HDD and test the waters that way too. Even if this bears no fruit, you'll have a new drive to use once this problem is resolved so it can't be considered as an unnecessary purchase.

I looked at your memory specs on the Crucial link you provided and as a general rule, Crucial does a pretty good job. Personally, I tend to stick with the best memory that money can buy and this is one of my "no compromise" system components. While I understand that you ran MemTest86 successfully, I would suggest you try your "SP2 install test" with only 1 stick which should rule out a potential memory problem. Please understand that MemTest86 is far from being a perfect measure.

Another thing you can check out is your DIMM voltage in the BIOS. You should be able to get an accurate readout of the current voltage in your BIOS power page. If it is less than the 1.8V spec, then you should have an option in the advanced settings page to increase this voltage from its current default setting. Be cautious, but check it out to verify that you are getting enough "juice ". One of the old tricks to stabalize problem systems was to increase core voltage (CPU) and DIMM voltage (memory). I'm not recommending you do either, however, verify that you are getting at least 1.8V and understand that this (if less than 1.8) could be a significant contributor to your dilemma.

I don't know much about Dave's tool either, but if you find the wrong chipset driver is being loaded (previous system's chipset driver), you have a potential answer that could be responsible for throwing the error. Understand that these drivers are loaded before your OS so you can't necessarily fix this problem from within Windows. A Bart PE disc or another approach will then be required.

Good Luck and again, I like the way you are approaching this problem. Hang in there - this will be resolved.

 

This weekends attempts

After installing the sp2 and it blowing up, I had to revert back to the sp1a repair install. I had to do it twice before I got it to work. Then put all the drivers back in, then download all the updates I can. And of course you have to reboot for every little thing. I won't do that again for awhile.

I haven't gone out and bought a SATA drive just yet. I had a few other ideas.

I ran the Dave's tool. It can give you 4 different reports, active drivers, inactive drivers, active services, inactive services. Then you have to look through it all. Some of the drivers listed have descriptive names, some do not. I saw nothing that looked like they were from the prior system. I deleted a couple of old drivers I recognized from the inactive list.

To answer your other questions Rockster, the dimm voltage shows as 1.84v. I didn't see a place to manually change that. But I believe that should be okay. As for memory quality, I always thought Micron / Crucial was one of the best. My prior system memory was from them.

Today my bright idea was to put back in my Promise ide card-I think I mentioned it once before. It is a Promise Ultra 133 TX2. I made sure it worked in the sp1a setup and had the latest driver from the website.

Then I took my cdrom off the motherboard ide and onto the promise, changing it to master, and tried it. It booted to Windows from the hard drive and worked fine that way, but when I tried to put a cd in and boot to it, it did not work. The cdrom apparently isn't seen in time. I didn't get the option to boot from it.

So I switched and put the hard drive on the Promise card and the cdrom on the motherboard ide port. It still booted up to the hard drive fine, and then I could boot the xpsp2 install cd from the cdrom. So they are both as masters on their own ide channels.

So I tried the xpsp2 install cd. I had a driver disk for the Promise card with the latest driver, and did the F6 and added it. But it still got the same bsod with the same error codes.

Unless there is some other problem, I guess it just is not going to boot to an ide device.

So now I may go get the Sata drive. I am considering a green power WD 500 gig Sata.

I really thought that separating the hd and cdrom on to separate ide channels would work.

I think I will try one more thing. I will put both on the Promise card and see if that will work. I'll have to shut down, I'm on that pc right now. It runs fine with sp1a.

Wayne.

 

Wayne:

I'm familiar with that Promise card - use it for HDD's only. As to your confidence in Crucial, yes - they are usually very good modules. However, I encountered a situation several years ago with a Soyo Board (one of my own machines) that wouldn't run with Crucial. Since then, I've been a little more cautious and don't use it any more. I could tell you a few war stories about differences in specific memory modules. Overclocking is one of my passions so I tend to expect a little more than "good" when it comes to memory but at this point, I would strongly advise you to try your "self-described" SP2 installation test with only one module seated. We need to be able to rule out memory as a cause of your current situation before giving serious consideration to a couple of other approaches.

 

Well now its worse

I guess I made too many repair installs to this installation. It started telling me I had to reactivate, and it wouldn't let me in until I did. I did not. So I figured I'm dead with that installation, so I went and got the Sata drive this afternoon.

Now with a blank Sata drive, no partition, the XP install cd with sp2, is giving me the same bsod, same errors at the same place. So I guess Sata vs IDE may not have been the problem.

I just also tried each stick of ram, by each one itself in each of four ram slots. Same result. Thats a lot of boot ups.

My slipstreamed cd with sp2 works in my laptop, that is, it gets to the install options, so I feel it is okay. And I made another one after that, where I first integrated sp1a, then did sp2 into it, in case that made a difference. That cd does the same thing as well.

I really can't think of any more tests and tweaks to do. I doubt if sp1 will start up with the Sata drive. I'd have to go back to the ide drive.

And I'm dead in the water with my desktop pc now.

The Sata drive is the WD greenpower 500gig. The bios sees the sata, it shows up correctly on channel 0.

Wayne.

 

Additional to "Well now its worse "

I forgot to add, since there is nothing on this new drive yet, I tried all these with lan, usb, and audio disabled. Also disabled hd smart. No effect.

Wayne.

 

Wayne:

It is probably getting pretty frustrating but lets step back and take a look at what we have going on here.

Your system blue-screened on startup when you transferred the IDE drive with SP2 from your previous system. You were able to run a repair installation using an SP1a slipstreamed CD on the previous SP2 install on the IDE System drive taken from your old machine. This runs/ran fine but any attempt to install SP2 using either an SP2 CD or doing a repair installation using a slipstreamed SP2 CD results in a bluescreen.

Please confirm (especially the result of using an SP2 CD containing only the Service Patch).

Your system blue-screened trying a repair installation with an SP2 slipstreamed CD with the previous System drive on a Promise PCI controller card using the latest Promise drivers at the F6 prompt during the repair. Your system also blue-screens trying a repair install with an SP1a CD on a Promise PCI controller card using the latest Promise drivers at the F6 prompt during the repair.

With no Promise controller present, your system blue-screens before a repair installation can be completed using the slip-streamed SP2CD when both memory modules are present, when only module #A is present and when only module #B is present.

With no Promise controller and no IDE HDD present on the board's single IDE header, blue-screening occurs when attempting a clean installation using the slipstreamed SP2 CD on a new SATA drive that has not been previously partitioned or formatted.

Wayne, this leads me to two potential areas of concern. The first being the integrity of your SP2 slipstreamed CD and the second being memory compatability. You seem to be fairly confident that your slipstreamed SP2 CD is good and I have no reason to doubt this belief. Your knowledge level is quite apparent throughout this thread and I like the methodical approach you have pursued while trouble-shooting this current problem. However, we can still question the integrity of this CD and you are more than capable of ruling this out or pursuing it further. That brings me to your memory and its compatability with this board and your Intel chipset.

AMD architecture differs from Intel in that their memory controller is on the processor itself. Intel handles this with the chipset being responsible for the memory controller. This is but one of many reasons why one can't simply move a System drive from one machine to another and expect it to run without doing a repair installation. Its also why one of the more common "fixes" you'll see posted on many forums includes updating chipset drivers.

Now, if you have the latest chipset drivers installed as you have, it sure points to read/write errors from the memory modules themselves. This is why I wanted to try running a single module instead of both. We take dual channel poblems out of the equation along with any default dram bank interleaving. This could also be an issue of timing or current settings and you may be able to "relax" them somewhat to correct this problem. I noticed that you are running the slower DDR option recommended for this board and as you have verified, Crucial is not on the approved vendor list provided by Gigabyte for this board. I'm not trying to dis Crucial, but its an area that needs further investigation.

The first question that I would anticipate from you would focus on why does an SP1a install run and any attempt to install SP2 cause a blue-screen? I can't answer this specifically but I have encountered this before. Most all of the older SONY PCG-FX series laptops demonstrated this same behavior. Perhaps someone else can shed more light on this as it relates to your specific chipset and SP2.

Wayne, I stand ready to assist but like you, am not sure where to go next. Please give the above two potential areas of concern some thinking.

Regards,

 

I had problems with getting my IDE DVD working on a single IDE controller. It would only run as Master, but I have a SATA HDD.

You may want to try running the drive/s on the IDE as Cable Select (CS), the HDD will need to go on the end of the cable. That reminds me, could the cable be connected in the wrong direction? The cable should only be connected in the right direction, if you fold it in half, the two drive connectors will be on one side, the other end is the motherboard connector. Did you run the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic utilities (the thread is getting a little long to recheck)? Since you need to reformat, use the HDD drive setup utilities to repartition and format the HDD.

In the BIOS settings, can you make HDD #1 (that is, whatever is the location of the IDE slave drive) a boot location? If the installation works with the HDD in the slave position, it might just be a matter of setting it to boot in that location in the BIOS.

To me, it is starting to look like a motherboard fault, although Rockster might have some more thoughts (Edit: I see he has, he posted while I was typing ).

Can you send the SATA DVD back? I would exchange it for a SATA HDD, see if that works, but even if it didn't, it would be best way of backing up as well as extra (fast) storage space. You may even want to think about putting the old drive into an external USB case for mobility.

Just a few maybes.

Matt
Umm, something else. If you have any DOS background, you can try copying the Win XP (SP2) CD to the hard drive, actually I think you only need the i386 folder, then boot to a boot disk and run the installation from the hard drive.

 

Updates

Note to Mattman, it was a Sata hard drive that I bought, not a Sata dvd. My dvd drive is still ide.

I will try not to be as wordy as usual. Last night I ran memtest86+ for several hours with no errors. I just can't believe that memory that works fine with sp1a and shows no errors, just suddenly becomes bad when sp2 is loaded. I just don't buy that.

Today I remade a slipstream xp w/sp2 install cd. Again it worked in my laptop and gets the same bsod in the new desktop setup. Oh I redownloaded sp2 from Microsoft just in case my earlier file had a problem.

I suspected I might need a driver for the JMicron chip that controls the ide controller. I have tried to download this JMicrons website many times, but they are in Taiwan. It is extremely slow, and it kept stalling out. I never did get that whole file. But I then looked at the driver cd that came with the motherboard and found I did have a driver there. It was buried deep in some directories, but was made for putting on a floppy to load at the F6 prompt. I tried that and it did not help. Still get the bsod.

So I used Nlite and made a custom xp install cd with sp2 and drivers for the chipset and jmicron chip. This did not work either.

So I downloaded Service Pack 3 release candidate 2, which was released on 2/27/2008. I slipstreamed it into my already slipstreamed cd with sp2.

The results make everything else so far a moot point. It booted with NO bsod, and got to the install options. Right now it is formatting the new Sata drive. Takes a long time for 500 gig.

So hopefully it will install okay. I hope it will give me a longer time to reactivate, and maybe I can use it minimally until the final version of service pack 3 comes out. In fact, I heard a rumor that activation may be done away with. I don't know if that comes with sp3 or not.

Any comments?

Wayne.

 

I'm praying right now, hoping a little religion befalls your efforts.

 

Doing okay

It installed. Seems to be running fine. It gave me 30 days to activate.

I am just setting up a few programs for now. I will likely have to do this again when the final sp3 comes out, which it is supposed to on April 29th. After that I will activate.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Wayne.

 

Congratulations. You deserve a lot of credit for seeing this through to a successful conclusion. It sure would be interesting to know what it was in SP2 (and eventually SP1a) that your system choked on, but I take more comfort in knowing that you are back up and running. My suspicions still remain with something associated with memory read/writes and in light of your SP3 beta results, I would now lean more towards the memory controller and an unknown but troublesome patch in SP2.

Nice job Wayne.

 

A bit late to the party here, but I'm very curious to know what Antivirus/Firewall software (AND VERSION) you have installed on this system. I have on more than one occasion had the same sort of conflict (BSODs) after installing SP2 due to conflicts with the AV/Firewall (2 separate AV/FW apps). Machine was fine with SP1 and the software, or with SP2 and no AV/Firewall, but no matter what I tried I couldn't make them work together. Solution was ultimately a different flavor of software. Since I've used those same apps on many other machines with SP2 and experienced no problems, I can only surmise that it was more to do with machine specific drivers and the way in which they interacted with SP2 and the AV/FW app.

 

For noahdfear

I use Norton Antivirus, which I disabled on those attempts to install the service pack directly. And for the firewall, since the SP2 firewall was not installed, basically there was no firewall at that point. That was one reason I really wanted to get SP2 on there. When I tried to install from the slipstreamed cd, the antivirus/firewall wasn't a factor at that point. Hope that helps.

Wayne.

 

Thanks Wayne.