- Bob - wrote:
> Short version of the story: Doing a major mobo swap so I was trying to
> do a repair install. New config is P4P800, no cards except ATI 9800
> video, standard IDE drives, couple IDE CD ROM's, couple gb memory.
>
> I put the winXP CD in the drive, booted and got the "press any key to
> boot from CD". Pressed the any key.
>
> Next it loaded the Windows drivers, mentioned it was searching for an
> installed version of windows, and then gave me the "where do you want
> to install windows" message. (I think it somehow missed detecting
> windows as it should have offered a repair, but that's beside the
> point right now :-). I selected the drive to install on and bang -
> black screen, crashed instantly. Tried it a couple times.
>
> I thought it might be the CD, so I swapped in my win2K CD and tried
> again. At the exact same point in the process it crashed.
>
> So, I decided to see if it was perhaps just a certain amount of time
> on for the CPU or memory or video. I booted without the CD and let it
> boot the old XP install on the disk. It booted fine, got into XP,
> detected the new hardware, and I was able to install new drivers, etc
> and run for a couple hours with no problems - so it doesn't seem like
> it's CU, or memory, or video.
>
> Thoughts? Why would it crash at that spot in windows install each
> time?
>
Things I'd try
1) Memtest86+ (bootable), Prime95 P95v255a (windows), 3DMark2001SE Build 330,
These are tests for a working Windows environment, and part of trying
to distinguish memory, versus memory/CPU, versus graphics problems.
2) Run disk diagnostic from the disk manufacturer site. In case a certain
part of the disk is bad.
3) Do a surface scan of the hard drive, if one wasn't done by the disk diagnostic
4) Check the CD. Nero has tools for this, some of which are free. A
burner program may also have options to scan media for PI/PO errors
and so on. In case you suspected a bad installer CD or problem with
the CD drive.
5) Boot the machine with a Linux LiveCD, and watch as hardware is detected.
See if Linux has the same kinds of problems as the Windows environment
does. Examples of LiveCDs are Knoppix (knopper.net) and Ubuntu (ubuntu.com).
A 700MB download and the cost of burning a CD. No software needs to be
installed from the CD, to boot a LiveCD. You can even run it without a
hard drive connected.
It could be that the Windows installer CD was trying to access the hard drive
for the first time, when the problem happened. It is unlikely to be a video
problem, because an installer is probably not stressing the video output
at that point in time.
If this was a power problem, then the Prime95 test would likely tip over the
box as well. 3DMark2001SE benchmark will draw a similar amount of power, as
the processor cannot quite run at 100% during the benchmark, while the video
card adds its 3D consumption numbers.
http://www.memtest.org (memtest86+)
http://www.mersenne.org/gimps/p95v255a.zip (Prime95 multithread)
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download99.html (3dmark2001SE for Windows)
(your hard disk manufacturer's diagnostic)
http://www.hdtune.com/ (surface scan)
http://www.cdspeed2000.com/files/Ner...peed_41120.zip (surface scan of a sort)
The fact you have a working install already, suggests there isn't a
serious problem, but something a bit more hidden. Otherwise I'd
suggest simplifying the setup. Since Windows is currently running,
it must be happy and have drivers for the hardware that is
currently enabled.
Maybe the problem has something to do with the partition map or
partitions on the drive ? I've had to wipe a couple disks with
"dd" in Linux, before I could use them with Windows. "dd" or disk
dump, is an old Unix utility, that can write to raw devices.
There is even a port for Windows. "dd" is always dangerous,
because a tiny keyboarding error can wipe out any connected
storage you might happen to have. If you're curious, the Windows
port is here, but this won't typically be of any use to you,
as wiping C: with "dd" doesn't normally make much sense :-)
But I do like the "--list" option, to list storage devices.
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
You can play with this, and see if it likes your current disk structure.
Probably Partition Magic can show a lot of the same info (but
in a friendly GUI manner).
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
HTH,
Paul
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