windows xp installation problem

ok, here's the deal. my computer crapped out a while back, and since my warranty had expired, i decided to do as the tech support guy suggested, and purchased a new motherboard and processor. i got a Shuttle AK32A board, and Athlon XP 2000+ processor. To complete the deal, i got a more powerful power supply.

well, i put it all together, and started it up. i didn't reinstall anything, hoping it would go smoothly. no sir. as it was starting xp, it went to blue screen, and stopped. i took everything out except for the video card, and tried again. to no avail. every now and then it would give me an IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error on the blue screen, but no indication of any drivers.

i decided to backup, format and reinstall xp. put it all back together, and everything seemed to be going smoothly. after loading the necessary files during the xp installation, when the "starting windows" screen comes up, the same exact thing happened! ARGH! now, i'm befuddled. i made a bootdisk, and flashed the bios with the newest version, but no luck. the ram check goes through, and i can work in dos just fine with a dos boot disk.

i am completely out of ideas, and since i've been working on this for a few days, just about ready to go postal. please!!! any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...


system specs:
shuttle ak32a mobo
athlon xp 2000+
256 pc133 sdram
maxtor 30 and maxtor 40 gig drives
dvd and cd-rw
350 watt antec power supply
nvidia gforce2 32mb


IM DESPERATE! PLEASE HELP!

 

What is the entire STOP message?

Do you have another vid card you haven't tried?

What about the BIOS? After flashing, did you load Fail-Safe or setup defaults? If your AGP is set to 4x, try 2x.

I realize that you wrote quite a bit above already, but an exhaustive list of everything you tried would help.

Try disconnecting all the non-system drives, too, except for your installation CD-ROM, of course. If the mem is in 2 sticks, try removing first one and then the other to see if one may be defective.

Another thing you could try:
When the message appears at the bottom during setup to press F6 for RAID, press F7 to load the HAL for Standard PC (without the ACPI HAL---this can be changed with a repair installation if you get loaded).

(It was a mistake to try to boot right away. You should have booted from the CD and run a repair installation before attempting to boot into Windows so your new hardware could be detected. But that is moot since you have formatted now. It was a full format with everything removed from the disks, right?)

 

i tried some of your suggestions, by changing ram, ram slots, video card. i had disconnected all drives except the main HD and cd rom i was going to use for the installation. and yes, the format was a complete format, wiping everything off.

after flashing the rom, i tried the fail safe setting, and also the ones suggested in the stop message (with caching and shadowing turned off).
agp was set to 2x, but i tried it both with 2x and 4x.
i also tried the standard pc installation, without ACPI HAL, but that resulted in the same thing... *sigh*.

the complete stop message that i get is as follows:

"A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen apears again, follow these steps:

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufacturer for driver updates. try changing video adapters.

check with your hadrware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. if you need to use safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, free F8 to select Advanced Startup options, and then select safe mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0x8085778F, 0xF9ED10E0, 0x00000000) "


Sometimes after the first sentence, it gives me the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error, but this does not happen every time.

and there never was a driver stated in the stop message, as it might suggest.

its not looking good...

thanks again

 

update:

just to make sure that it wasn't some stupid windows xp glitch or whatnot, i attempted to install windows 2000 pro. well, it pretty much came up with the same error, but gave me this extra info (is it windows 2000 specific?)

the top few lines before it starts giving ideas on how to fix it go like this:

"*** STOP: 0x0000001E (0xC0000005, 0x8044dB65, 0x00000001, 0x00000001)
KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED

*** Address 8044DB65 base at 80400000, DateStamp 384d5a76 - ntoskrnl.exe "

the rest of this stop message basically says what the xp one does.

i'm gonna keep looking, hopefully this will help with something.

thanks again

 

arie, i took out all the pci devices for the installation, and with my old motherboard, they worked just fine; with my previous xp installation.

the ideas they give in the windows knowledge base, i've tried...

 

Hardware for sure, but where to begin?

It appears that the STOP occurs at the first attempt to access the HD. If the HD you are trying to install on can be switched with the other, try that so at least the HD will be eliminated as a possibility.

How are the HD jumpers set? When you use just one drive, try removing the jumper altogether.

I'm curious about how you formatted. Since you couldn't have done it from XP CD, did you format from a floppy? The manual for that board tells you to fdisk and format with the /s option to make the HD a system disk. This leaves only FAT32 as a possible file system. Is that what you did?

The other question I have is about the BIOS flash. Did you remove the read-only jumper to allow the update?

Just flailing here trying to generate some ideas. Have you gone through every option in the BIOS to be sure that something like memory type is not mischosen with the fail-safe defaults?

Any possibility both memory modules may have been hit by static? Any other stick you could beg, borrow, or steal?

One more---are you installing to a completely empty drive? The manual has directions about installing the VIA drivers, seemingly before the OS. Nothing from the mb CD should be loaded into the computer (as you probably know).

Anything unusual in the PC Health section of the BIOS? Is the fan speed registering correctly?

Try disabling the L2 cache.

DRAM clock set correctly to 133?

HD's set to Auto for Type, PIO, and UDMA?

Disable IDE prefetch?

Try changing from PNP to non-PNP OS in the BIOS?

Try not letting BIOS assign IRQ's (video, modem, etc.)
------------------------------------
I'm just hoping that I mention something that you haven't thought of, as unlikely as that may be.

Please let us know how it's going.


ADD:
Found a post tonight with your exact mb and problem. The guy got XP installed by disabling ECC on the L2 cache. He turned it back on after and it worked fine.

 

Are you using a 40 wire ribbon cable on your hard drive? I've had this happen and had to switch to a 80 wire cable and that took care of the problem.

Hope this helps.

GDTEXAS

 

Well, another update. After taking a day off from this nightmare, I tried everything that you guys mentioned, with no results...

the hard drive jumpers are set to master for the drive i was using, with no other drives hooked up. It is a completely empty drive, but i didn't format it as a system drive (i dont think)... i formatted it while it was hooked up to my roommates computer for backing up the data. he has win2k pro, so it was formatted in win2k's interface as an NTFS disk, but i dont remember there being an option to make it a system disk. would this make a difference? i am going to try to format is with the /s option to make it a system disk, then try to install the os, and reformat in NTFS... might as well try everything. i tried replacing the install drive with the other drive in my comp... no good.

tried the things you suggested, abraxas, with disabling/ changing options in the BIOS with no success. i was really excited when i read you found someone with the same problem with the same mobo, but unfortunately, it didn't work nearly as well for me...

i haven't tried the ribbon cable thing, i might go pick one up tommorrow.

quick question: i was looking through the posts on the IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors on windowsbbs, and one guy said that he had too much cooling gel on his processor, and when he removed some, it worked fine. when i got my new cpu, i didn't get any cooling gel, but did get a new fan recommended by amd for this processor. do i need to put on the gel, and would this have any possible bearing on what's going wrong?

thanks again. i really appreciate all of your help.

 

My inclination is that your machine has not really been run long enough for heat problems to develop. Heat generally causes more random and inconsistent errors rather than the same thing every time.

On the other hand, though I don't believe it will solve the problem, using a dab of Arctic Silver or another conductive (heat, not electricity!) paste does facilitate the transfer of heat to the sink. It it a good idea somewhere down the road.

Examine everything with a magnifying glass. Be sure no electrical components are touching anything they shouldn't and that the board is well protected from contact with the case on its bottom and edges.

I wasn't suggesting that the drive be formatted as a system drive. It would make no difference. I was just wondering if you had followed the procedure laid out in the manual. Did you try that drive by itself with the jumper removed completely?

The cable idea is worth a try, as is disabling UDMA on your drives in the BIOS, but generally an "unmountable volume" error results from the wrong cable during setup.

I was hopeful, too, about that other post I saw. Oh, well. I'm running out of ideas . Clearly there is something wrong with the way this board is set up since others install XP on them every day without problems. Sometimes I think I can actually see a short............

All I can say is triple-check everything you have done from the beginning (which I'm sure you have, but if you're like me, you might miss something the first 20 times or so).

For what it's worth, and I'm not sure what that is, several people mentioned in posts that that board seemed very sensitive to different power supplies and they couldn't boot with some of the new ones they tried. Do you have the old PSU still?

 

First of all, get some thermal paste on there immediately. And, as has been mentioned - Artic Silver is the best. Secondly, back off on your memory settings - use setup defaults in the bios. You've already read the MSKB articles about 0x stop messages based on your earlier posts and I trust you have stripped everything out of there except your video card. How comfortable are you with the bios bin file you used? Did you clear CMOS after your flash and reset your bios? You may want to try clearing your CMOS again and then recheck all of your bios settings. Post back and keep us updated - these stop errors can be tough finding the culprit.

 

.....and if you do reflash the BIOS, don't forget to move the read-only jumper on that board (JP3 form 1/2 to 2/3) and after you flash, as Rockster2U mentioned, clear the CMOS (JP16 from 1/2 to 2/3).