Help needed: problem installing XP on new system

I seriously need help as I'm completely clueless as to what's the problem...

Problem: My friend wanted me to look at his computer as it looked like it
had gone, which it was. Got new hard drive (Maxtor 40GB Fireball 3 5400RPM)
and tried to install it. Turns out that the motherboard seemed to have gone
as well. Suggested he get a basic system without hard drive and I would fit
hard drive and his CD writer and DVD rom to the new system. Got case,
motherboard (ECS / ASROCK M810LMR) chip (Duron 1600 mhz) all assembled and I
put in hard drive, CD and DVD drives. Pretty straightforward so far...

Set computer to boot from CD, Stuck in the XP CD, get to the "press a key to
boot from cd" and try to format the harddrive to NTFS. The formatting gets
to 100% then a new page comes up with the message "Setup was unable to
format the partition. The disk may be damaged". Odd I thought as it was a
brand new hard drive. Tried again but this time doing a quick NTFS format.
Seemed to get through that OK, then it started to copy files from CD, then
got a message "could not find xxx file" (or something). Tried this a few
times and the file which it stopped at seemed to be random. Maybe it was
the CD, I thought...

Attached the hard drive to my own PC, stuck in the XP disk, hard drive
formatted and installed XP first time, no probelms at all. Stuck the hard
drive in the other PC and it got to the xp loading screen then came up with
a bunch of errors about configuration and settings (sorry can't be more
specific) which was fair enough as the computer has different motherboard,
processor etc. to mine. Tried to reinstall XP and came across same problems
as before again. Thought maybe it was the IDE cable which was taken from my
friend's old PC...

Stuck a new IDE cable in, same problems... Thought it was something to do
with the CD or DVD drive, so put MY CD drive (which installed XP onto my PC)
into the new PC (whilst removing the other CD and DVD drive), same problems.
Also tried it with the CD IDE cable from my PC too, still no luck.

There are other weird things happening as well. Computer hangs at random
places during startup e.g. when the message comes up to press a key to boot
from CD. If it gets passed this point and it starts to load files to
initialise the installation (before it tries to format drive) sometimes it
hangs here, or I sometimes get messages saying "The file xxx could not be
found". Basically the problems seem to happen on a random basis and it just
seems luck that it gets to the formatting stage.

I'm at a standstill as to what to try next.

Somethings I've noticed during this: If I enter BIOS setup (pressing F2)
and set the floppy drive and the CD as the only bootable items, then upon
reboot enter the boot menu (pressing F11) it lists the bootable times,
Floppy: 1.44 floppy drive, Hard drive: Maxtor..., CD: blank, like its not
recognising the CD drive, but the PC does auto detect the CD at startup.
Could it be a settings conflict between hard drive and CD drive? and if so
how would i fix this?

Also, I should mention, I downloaded a hard drive checking utility from the
Maxtor site, and ran this with the hard drive in the new PC and it came up
with no problems on the hard drive, and I also performed a low level format
on the drive, but still didn't fix things.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If anyone manages to sort this, they
are a genius.

thanks

G.J.

"GJ" wrote in message
. ..
I seriously need help as I'm completely clueless as to what's the
problem...

Problem: My friend wanted me to look at his computer as it looked like it
had gone, which it was. Got new hard drive (Maxtor 40GB Fireball 3
5400RPM)
and tried to install it. Turns out that the motherboard seemed to have
gone
as well. Suggested he get a basic system without hard drive and I would
fit
hard drive and his CD writer and DVD rom to the new system. Got case,
motherboard (ECS / ASROCK M810LMR) chip (Duron 1600 mhz) all assembled and
I
put in hard drive, CD and DVD drives. Pretty straightforward so far...

Set computer to boot from CD, Stuck in the XP CD, get to the "press a key
to
boot from cd" and try to format the harddrive to NTFS. The formatting
gets
to 100% then a new page comes up with the message "Setup was unable to
format the partition. The disk may be damaged". Odd I thought as it was
a
brand new hard drive. Tried again but this time doing a quick NTFS
format.
Seemed to get through that OK, then it started to copy files from CD, then
got a message "could not find xxx file" (or something). Tried this a few
times and the file which it stopped at seemed to be random. Maybe it was
the CD, I thought...


snip

may be a RAM problem

"philo" wrote in message
...

"GJ" wrote in message
. ..
I seriously need help as I'm completely clueless as to what's the
problem...

Problem: My friend wanted me to look at his computer as it looked like
it
had gone, which it was. Got new hard drive (Maxtor 40GB Fireball 3
5400RPM)
and tried to install it. Turns out that the motherboard seemed to have
gone
as well. Suggested he get a basic system without hard drive and I would
fit
hard drive and his CD writer and DVD rom to the new system. Got case,
motherboard (ECS / ASROCK M810LMR) chip (Duron 1600 mhz) all assembled
and
I
put in hard drive, CD and DVD drives. Pretty straightforward so far...

Set computer to boot from CD, Stuck in the XP CD, get to the "press a
key
to
boot from cd" and try to format the harddrive to NTFS. The formatting
gets
to 100% then a new page comes up with the message "Setup was unable to
format the partition. The disk may be damaged". Odd I thought as it
was
a
brand new hard drive. Tried again but this time doing a quick NTFS
format.
Seemed to get through that OK, then it started to copy files from CD,
then
got a message "could not find xxx file" (or something). Tried this a
few
times and the file which it stopped at seemed to be random. Maybe it
was
the CD, I thought...


snip

may be a RAM problem


Hmm, I think you may have just hit the nail on the head. PC has 1 stick of
128 mb ram installed. I had been using quick boot and skipping the memory
check stage. Just enabled it before and it came up with "98304KB OK", which
equals 96 mb. So it looks like 32 mb ain't working. Unplugged the ram and
plugged it back in again and still only 96 mb...

Thanks for your help.

G.J.

Hmm, I think you may have just hit the nail on the head. PC has 1 stick
of
128 mb ram installed. I had been using quick boot and skipping the memory
check stage. Just enabled it before and it came up with "98304KB OK",
which
equals 96 mb. So it looks like 32 mb ain't working. Unplugged the ram
and
plugged it back in again and still only 96 mb...

Thanks for your help.



you may also want to try mem test on that RAM
if you still have a problem

http://www.memtest86.com/

"philo" wrote in message
...


Hmm, I think you may have just hit the nail on the head. PC has 1 stick
of
128 mb ram installed. I had been using quick boot and skipping the
memory
check stage. Just enabled it before and it came up with "98304KB OK",
which
equals 96 mb. So it looks like 32 mb ain't working. Unplugged the ram
and
plugged it back in again and still only 96 mb...

Thanks for your help.



you may also want to try mem test on that RAM
if you still have a problem

http://www.memtest86.com/



Thanks for the link. I'll give that a try. But from what I've said, you're
pretty much certain that that's the problem?

G.J.

Sounds like ram to me. I had the same problem with my sys when I first got
it. But I was stubborn, finally got XP installed. Would get random
reboots, ran memtest and Viola TONS of errors. My suggestion would be to
swap ram out with stuff you know to be good and see how it goes.

-Chris

"Chris Stolworthy" wrote in message
...
Sounds like ram to me. I had the same problem with my sys when I first
got
it. But I was stubborn, finally got XP installed. Would get random
reboots, ran memtest and Viola TONS of errors. My suggestion would be to
swap ram out with stuff you know to be good and see how it goes.

-Chris



Yeah, that's what I tried, but the RAM in my PC is SDRAM and it seems that
this other RAM is DDR and, so, doesn't fit. I'm going to see if I can get
hold of some tomorrow. I've spent my whole weekend trying to sort this
out - let that be a lesson to not do computing favours for friends.

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 17:59:37 -0000, "GJ"
wrote:


may be a RAM problem


Hmm, I think you may have just hit the nail on the head. PC has 1 stick of
128 mb ram installed. I had been using quick boot and skipping the memory
check stage. Just enabled it before and it came up with "98304KB OK", which
equals 96 mb. So it looks like 32 mb ain't working. Unplugged the ram and
plugged it back in again and still only 96 mb...

The system uses an integrated video mainboard, yes?
That missing 32MB is probably the video frame buffer allocation, meaning
that's not a sign of any problem.

That's a cheap junk motherboard. You were taking a gamble with it and
might've lost. Could be the board, or the power supply if it's a
similarly cheap unit, or the memory.

Don't mean to sound like I'm preaching or anything, but these are some of
the reasons eveyone doesn't buy the cheapest parts possible.

Yeah, that's what I tried, but the RAM in my PC is SDRAM and it seems that
this other RAM is DDR and, so, doesn't fit. I'm going to see if I can get
hold of some tomorrow. I've spent my whole weekend trying to sort this
out - let that be a lesson to not do computing favours for friends.



If you run the mem test and the RAM is bad or flakey
I recommend getting a good quality RAM and not any of that low priced
generic stuff. Although XP will run with just 128 megs of RAM...
ideally you should go for 256 megs (or more)

"kony" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 17:59:37 -0000, "GJ"
wrote:


may be a RAM problem


Hmm, I think you may have just hit the nail on the head. PC has 1 stick
of
128 mb ram installed. I had been using quick boot and skipping the
memory
check stage. Just enabled it before and it came up with "98304KB OK",
which
equals 96 mb. So it looks like 32 mb ain't working. Unplugged the ram
and
plugged it back in again and still only 96 mb...

The system uses an integrated video mainboard, yes?
That missing 32MB is probably the video frame buffer allocation, meaning
that's not a sign of any problem.

That's a cheap junk motherboard. You were taking a gamble with it and
might've lost. Could be the board, or the power supply if it's a
similarly cheap unit, or the memory.

Don't mean to sound like I'm preaching or anything, but these are some of
the reasons eveyone doesn't buy the cheapest parts possible.

I know it was cheap - my friend hates spending money so had to find the
cheapest set-up for him ;-) Actually, I got the motherboard wrong before -
I was going off the spec that was advertised on the vendors site. Checking
the one they actually installed, it's the K7VM2. Don't know if that makes
any difference to your comment. I tried disabling all the on-board
integrated stuff like sound etc. but couldn't see any on-board video to
disable.

cheers

G.J.