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XP/SATA problems - help?

  • 08-06-2004 1:16pm
    #1
    silverside
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,372 ✭✭✭


    I am having a problem with my windows XP installation - would welcome your assistance with my troubleshooting. It's a long one... (writing it all down will help me get my thoughts straight in any case).

    Problem:
    Windows XP pro gets midway through booting (colour splash screen with blue progress bar), then display goes blank, fans and power stays on, keyboard becomes unresponsive. This problem occurred after computer had been running well for 2 weeks. However I was playing around with installing new software at the time. Can't remember exactly what was installed last. Other notes: Had to unplug and leave powered down for 10 seconds + so that USB keyboard can be read on bootup.

    System:
    Biostar 200N SFF MB (Nforce2) (has sata support in chipset enabled); 160GB samsung SATA. onboard video and 9800pro. Cheap floppy drive. 512MB crucial ram. USB keyboard/mouse.

    Investigation:
    Set all multipliers.FSB, etc back to very conservative levels.
    Removed all internal cards (sound and video). Booted from onboard graphics normally and into safe mode. Memory check and POST all fine. Fails midway through safe mode bootup as before.

    Provisional diagnosis
    Booting in safe mode, the last two drivers loaded are d346_bus.sys (daemon tools) and giveio.sys. It hangs on giveio.sys. Giveio.sys seems to be a part of a motherboard monitoring tool. There seems to be a problem with one of these 2 drivers.

    Attempted fix
    Reinstall windows by booting from an XP cd and inserting the RAID driver floppy when prompted. turn off DMA on IDE in bios to enable semi-reliable reading of floppy.

    Problem with attempted fix
    1) Had to turn off DMA on IDE in bios to enable reliable reading of floppy. Now floppy reading is sporadic. When it works, XP accepts SATA driver, proceeds through installation, looks for an existing HD, then hangs when attempting to access the HD. Says something like 'Examining 150000MB of hdd0 on bus 0 on sata' but remains stuck there for 10 minutes.

    Other possible fixes which I am about to try.
    1) Write floppy drivers again from another PC in case the alignment on the writing PC is off; attempt as before.
    2) Reflash Motherboard bios to latest version; attempt as before
    3) Borrow an IDE hard drive; install XP onto that; install the SATA drivers onto the IDE installation, mount the SATA drive as a secondary drive, delete the 2 offending .sys files, and attempt to boot from the SATA drive.
    4) Get someone else to mount the SATA drive as a secondary drive - delete the 2 sys files, stick the SATA drive back in my own PC, and start again.

    If 1) and/or 2) work, then everything is fine.

    Do you think 3 and/or 4 will work? Is deleting the .sys files the best way to remedy a the problem?
    Is there anything else I am missing out?
    Could something on the HD itself be causing windows to hang when examining it?

    Other questions:
    I am enabling chipset SATA support - I presume this is correct?


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