Blue screen installing XP
Discussion
Hi folks.
Weird one here.
Have an oldish (P3 800 or something) PC that's been running happily with Win 2k on it for years, decided to upgrade to XP.
"Upgraded" the installation which hung with a couple of nasty blue screens during install, but seemed to work OK.
I was a bit unhappy with it and decided to rebuild the machine totally, format HD the lot, booting from the XP CD.
However, I'm having loads of problems with it BSOD'ing whilst rebuilding. We are talking during the HD format or during the file copying - nothing advanced. The screen is one I've not seen before with loads of info on updating drivers / safe mode / checking hardware. Tech info is liited to "STOP" and some addresses, with a different file each time seemingly. Meanwhile the hard disc appears to continue copying (not just stepping at the same interval repeatedly.
The machine has been fine for ages. Only dodgy hardware is an ancient ISA SCSI card & tape drive which I've pulled, but still the same problems.
Any ideas?
Weird one here.
Have an oldish (P3 800 or something) PC that's been running happily with Win 2k on it for years, decided to upgrade to XP.
"Upgraded" the installation which hung with a couple of nasty blue screens during install, but seemed to work OK.
I was a bit unhappy with it and decided to rebuild the machine totally, format HD the lot, booting from the XP CD.
However, I'm having loads of problems with it BSOD'ing whilst rebuilding. We are talking during the HD format or during the file copying - nothing advanced. The screen is one I've not seen before with loads of info on updating drivers / safe mode / checking hardware. Tech info is liited to "STOP" and some addresses, with a different file each time seemingly. Meanwhile the hard disc appears to continue copying (not just stepping at the same interval repeatedly.
The machine has been fine for ages. Only dodgy hardware is an ancient ISA SCSI card & tape drive which I've pulled, but still the same problems.
Any ideas?
Weirder.
A couple of times it has just hung on a file without crashing, and said "unable to copy file". Skip to the next one, and it's the same, and so on, and so on. All the time the hard disc has just gone into this repeating "tick tick tick tick tick tick tickticktick" repeating cycle.
All I can think is that the hard disk is damaged (but it's been fine for the last x years until the minute I repartition
). If it were the IDE interface it wouldn't wait 10 minutes to hang. Likewise, if it was a dodgy CD (not, I've used it recently with no problems) it would always happen at the same point.
Stupid computers.
A couple of times it has just hung on a file without crashing, and said "unable to copy file". Skip to the next one, and it's the same, and so on, and so on. All the time the hard disc has just gone into this repeating "tick tick tick tick tick tick tickticktick" repeating cycle.
All I can think is that the hard disk is damaged (but it's been fine for the last x years until the minute I repartition
). If it were the IDE interface it wouldn't wait 10 minutes to hang. Likewise, if it was a dodgy CD (not, I've used it recently with no problems) it would always happen at the same point. Stupid computers.
Are you using CS on your disk? If so, try setting the jumper on the hd to MASTER (and any other to SLAVE) etc, etc.
XP full load is finicky about that.
Also, what motherboard is it? If it is too old you may have to look around for an updated XP set of mass storage drivers and go the F6 route when installing XP from scratch. What probably happened during the upgrade is that XP just looked at the Win2K drivers and said "Windows 2000 drivers? Ok, fair enough, we'll give them a shot..."
ErnestM
XP full load is finicky about that.
Also, what motherboard is it? If it is too old you may have to look around for an updated XP set of mass storage drivers and go the F6 route when installing XP from scratch. What probably happened during the upgrade is that XP just looked at the Win2K drivers and said "Windows 2000 drivers? Ok, fair enough, we'll give them a shot..."
ErnestM
I had a similar problem with Windows98 SE a while ago. I know it's a different version and stuff, bear with me. It was actually the disk that shipped with the machine. Until that point I'd not had grief, and since it came pre installed I'd had no need to use it, other than hardware installations and stuff.
When I finally rebuilt the machine, I was horrified that I couldn't install the OS from the manufacturer disks.
After much faffing around it turns out that the machine had shipped with a Win98 disk that was supposed to work with the specific machine, but the hard disk had been flashed separately. Unfortunately they'd screwed up during production and given me the disk for a different machine that they also make.
This isn't applicable to you, but it made me realise thate there are significant differences between OEM and manufacturer installation disks.
Once I'd got hold of the generic disk rather than the manufacturer disk, all was well.
>> Edited by dilbert on Wednesday 15th February 03:29
>> Edited by dilbert on Wednesday 15th February 03:30
When I finally rebuilt the machine, I was horrified that I couldn't install the OS from the manufacturer disks.
After much faffing around it turns out that the machine had shipped with a Win98 disk that was supposed to work with the specific machine, but the hard disk had been flashed separately. Unfortunately they'd screwed up during production and given me the disk for a different machine that they also make.
This isn't applicable to you, but it made me realise thate there are significant differences between OEM and manufacturer installation disks.
Once I'd got hold of the generic disk rather than the manufacturer disk, all was well.
>> Edited by dilbert on Wednesday 15th February 03:29
>> Edited by dilbert on Wednesday 15th February 03:30
It could well be what ErnestM said. That vintage of P3 often had a DMA66 or DMA100 IDE drive interface which needed additional drivers to work properly. If you don't have them you can put an "old" 40 way DMA33 IDA cable in and that will force it back to the old standard that didn't need extra drivers.
Mike
Mike
NiceCupOfTea said:
Dodgy RAM? Could be dodgy in a way that the w2k install didn't highlight?
Maybe - but wouldn't the initial XP upgrade have triggered this behaving badly? It worked fine before I started the full rebuild.
I don't know, but presented with such a machine if it was going tick-tick-tick then first I'd try another hard disk, followed by some known good RAM since the rest of the problems are classic symptoms of dodgy RAM. memtest86+ might be worth a shot but I've seen ram pass this and still cause problems, so I'd only use it to prove a negative not a positive. Course reasoning would suggest that it couldn't be the ram, but don't forget computers are b*stards
Thanks guys.
I have come to the conclusion that it's probably the hard disk. Reckon it has some bad sectors on it that were "mapped out" with some stuff stored on them that I never used - re partitioning and reformatting it had got it upset.
Will try it with another disk when I free one up and let you know
Thanks for all the help!
I have come to the conclusion that it's probably the hard disk. Reckon it has some bad sectors on it that were "mapped out" with some stuff stored on them that I never used - re partitioning and reformatting it had got it upset.
Will try it with another disk when I free one up and let you know
Thanks for all the help!
why dont you get a 98 bootdisk and do FDISK delete the partition and then recreate a primary partition and check that the integrity check goes up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.... and doesnt skip back else you could always download the microsoft diagnostics disk and perform a hdd and ram check to be sure
shocker-z said:
why dont you get a 98 bootdisk and do FDISK delete the partition and then recreate a primary partition and check that the integrity check goes up 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.... and doesnt skip back else you could always download the microsoft diagnostics disk and perform a hdd and ram check to be sure
All depends on whether the partition is NTFS or FAT 32. If it is NTFS FDISK off a Win 98 boot disk will not read it. Get hold of Ultimate Boot CD and use the utilities on this. It contains all sorts of goodies that will help you fix your machine and diagnoes any hardware problems. Helped me find out some dodgy RAM recently. Has plenty of HDD tools so you can format etc. Then just boot off the XP CD and reformat the whole drive.
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