My nightmare continues...

Shiminay

Well folks, I'm about ready to kill someone/thing...

I've been having a load of stress with my own machine. For those who don't know, here's a quick re-cap:
Everything was running smooth until after the WCG in October. I ended up having to send the motherboard (Striker Extreme) back to Asus. It came back to me some time later and I was doing a wee upgrade of RAM. Went from 4GB of Team 6400 RAM to 4GB of Corsair Dominator 8500 which was EPIC FAIL! Would not load into windows (XP 64) nor would it even allow me to reinstall (would start the installer from the CD but never got past "starting Windows Setup" message after loading all it's "stuff"). So, I thought maybe the hard disk or ram, tried a brand new hard disk and no joy.

The Latest:
Yesterday, I got new RAM (4GB of Team 6400 RAM again this time 2X2GB rather than 4X1GB) and still no joy. It starts to load Windows and bluescreens after the black screen with the logo and the status bar. I was never able to see what was on that screen before as it always restarted, but last night it didn't and said it was the USB drivers - so unplugged anything usb and had at it again to no avail.

Being bored and rather desperate, I remembered I had a XUbuntu CD in the house and fired it in and low and behold, it worked! I have that installed on the other hard disk and aside from some display issues, it's grand! This to me suggests that there's nothing wrong with the hardware and it's all to do with Windows. I tried to mount the Windows disk but it said it couldn't cause the NTFS system said it's in use which I put down to the fact that it gives the Windows boot options menu before getting to the loading screen (the "Windows did not start properly - do you want safe mode/command prompt/start normally" screen - I'm sure ye've all seen it).

So I'm gonna get a regular 32bit XP here in the office this evening and see if that'll go and see what's what after that, but any thoughts or input you my building brethern and sistern (cistern? ) would be much appreciated.

And now, the Spec list:

• Asus Striker Extreme mobo
• Intel C2D E6700 - not overclocked with Thermalright Ultra 120 cooler
• 4GB (2 X 2GB) Team DDR2-6400 RAM
• Inno3D 8800GTX
• 2 X Western Digital 500 GB SATA hard disks
• 1 X Pioneer DVD RW SATA drive (2nd SATA port)
• Antec P900 case
• Win XP 64bit (genuine, purchased copy ) on hard disk in 1st SATAslot
• Xubuntu 7.I dunno what on the other (3rd SATA)

astrofool

4 sticks of 1GB ram has been known to give problems on certain system, is the BIOS fully updated?

If you hit F8 while loading windows, you'll get an option not to reboot when the machine blue screens, also, try safe mode, if the system dies after it gets to MUP.sys, then it's likely a RAM stability issue. Set the timings in the bios to as relaxed as they will go, and it should boot again, then you can increase the speed slowly till it stops booting, and know what your limits are (I had the exact same thing happen on a DFI board I had).

Spear

Kharn wrote: »

The Latest:
Yesterday, I got new RAM (4GB of Team 6400 RAM again this time 2X2GB rather than 4X1GB) and still no joy. It starts to load Windows and bluescreens after the black screen with the logo and the status bar. I was never able to see what was on that screen before as it always restarted, but last night it didn't and said it was the USB drivers - so unplugged anything usb and had at it again to no avail.

I've seen some behaviour like that recently with my own machine using 4x 1GB sticks of Corsair Dominator. Some days it'll get it into it's head to not start. Leave it sit for a while and it's back to normal. It seems completely random, heat and power aren't an issue and it's regardless of timings. I'm thinking of upping the voltage slightly to stabilise it.

Joeface

Im going to be really silly and ask did u try installing with only one stick of ram installed , I had a very very similar problem you describe in a work system recently and as you said been bored , I install with just one stick of ram in the system and it bloody worked .....as to why i dont know , but seems to running ok with both sticks in after XP was fully installed

Shiminay

Yea, tried the 1 stick in a slot with both the Dominator and the new Team stuff and it's the same thing each time. It did load into windows once with 1 of the dominators in but it seemed like that was an error more than anything else

I'm gonna give it a go with the regular XP cd and see if it'll play ball with the installer tonight. I know that NTFS on that disk has locked it into "didn't start properly" mode which at this stage may be causing problems, so if I have to rip it out and format it some other way, that'd totally suck balls as I've a lot of dataz on it.

I guess for now, I wait till this evening and the XP cd

Joeface

Well best of luck with the recovery hope it works out. These installs can be a b!tch sometimes, Had one that failed 3 or four times found out it was i could only re-install using that windows XP Disk with the same hard drive only so many times or something like that , Borrowed a disk and installed fine with the same serial,just a different disk.

RoyalMarine

this just really shows how ****e windows really is

seamus

You won't get your 4 Gigs if you install Windows 32 bit. You'll be limited to just over 3 Gigs. Also note that unless it's a brand spanking Windows XP CD, it won't be able to see your SATA drives and you'll need to plug in a floppy drive and make a floppy disc with your SATA drivers on it. No, I'm not kidding

Mounting NTFS in Linux can be tricky, but if you've booted into Ubuntu then the filesystem probably isn't in use.
Just make sure that you're in the root of the filesystem that you're trying to mount. A number of times I've typed

mount -t autofs /dev/sdb2 /Windows

While I was in /Windows and get "Device is already mounted or in use."
If you're absolutely sure that you're doing everything right, then there's a good chance that Ubuntu has done what ubuntu does best and has detected and automounted your Windows partition.
Take a look in the /media folder to see if the drive is there.

If it's a bluescreen error, post up the error code here. I'm sure you've googled it, but sometimes things aren't always as they seem.

TheThreeDegrees

Kharn,

looks/sounds as if that HDD is foo pah!

Try another sata port and also try a different sata cable.

Anti

Dav, Have you tried increasing the voltage on the ram in the bios ?

Shiminay

Got the XP cd from the office home, popped in, went into setup!

Saw 2 partitions for 130GB on the same bus (0), so I hopped back out and powered off and removed the second disk's sata connection and power and it's currently installing 32 bit XP Pro.

We shall see where it goes...

I've lost 500GB of tasty dataz though

Archytas

Your x64 CD - Slipstreamed? I see this a bit on non x64 certified hardware. Well I don't mean certified but not built specifically, like say, server hardware, for x64 operating systems.

The slipstreaming might add some handy drivers for the install.

stevenmu

Have you already wiped the drive with the data you wanted to keep? Sometimes booting off the XP cd into recovery console and running chkdsk can remove the lock.

Shiminay

Well here's the update after last night's adventures...

There's a copy of XP Pro (32bit) installed and for the most part, running. It hasn't picked up the network ports on the motherboard so isn't internetting. Fired in the motherboard driver/utils DVD and it went about installing things, but still didn't work.

So I'm gonna pull the drive out and plug it into something else and see what's what cause it appears to be bollixed

Tonight's plan is to play with the hard drives and see what it does. Might need to wipe that Xubuntu install I made the other nght, but given how easy it was to get that going, I'm not worried about having to put it back on again if necessary

I'll give that recovery console / chkdsk plan a look first - thanks for that stevenmu.