New in these here parts....but need a little help

[Pussywillow]

Hello everyone,

I've just joined as my PC build is driving me nuts !

My first was fine, everything went as it should and I have now sold on a half decent Pc to someone.

Ah but my second was a refurb of a Maxx PC, that has always given us trouble. So, I thought, given my success with my first scratch build 'I can do anything'.

I stripped the Maxx case out. Replaced the motherboard, the power supply, the hard drive and added an Athlon 2200XP proc and a new system fan (pretty!). the only things I kept were the floppy, and the two cd drives (one CD-ROM, one CD-R).

It all works, but will it take a windows load ? Nope. No way.

I have spent all day formatting and partioning the 40gb HDD and that was fine . I then followed the instructions in the guide and tried to find drivers for the Cd's. Hmmm. Not so easy, especially in DOS.

Ok, so I ended up using generic drivers and get them sorted into drives d and E. time to put on the OS. Windows XP pro.

Well what a mare. It just won't load. The furthest I can get to is is the blue screen saying 'loading windows'. It just sits there doing nowt.

I have rebooted a hundred times, and 7/10 it does the same. The other times I get error like error code 7 or windows can't continue as we don't like your deodorant (or something like that, just shows my state of mind lol).

Any ideas ? any help much appreciated.

My specs are below.
ATX Case (Maxx PC)
Athlon XP 2200.
Motherboard (brand new) EQS-PM_270KA-DAS (socket A)
512K RAM (crucial)
Brand new Seagate 40gb HDD model 7200.7.
500Watt Top Power supply unit
CD LG 52x
CDR LG 52x24x48x

[saphalline]

Welcome to the PC Guide Forums!!

DOS drivers for your CD drives? Error Code 7? I think you're making this a bit more complicated than it needs to be. WinXP doesn't use DOS at all, so for starters, you should completely wipe the hard drive and start over. Download Seagate's DiscWizard Starter Edition (for making a bootable floppy) and delete all partition info on the hard drive. You can also use DiscWizard to partition your hard drive if you so desire, or Windows can do it for you. Whatever you want.

Once the hard drive is "fresh" again, take out the floppy and put in the WinXP CD. If the problem was with the previous data on the hard drive, everything should go smoothly now. If not, report back with the new symptoms.

Computers are fun!!

[Erik]

What do you mean by finding DOS drivers for the CD drives? All you should need to do to install Windows XP is set one of the CD drives to boot first in BIOS, stick an XP CD in there and install. No more need to find drivers, boot to DOS, and start the install from there.

[Pussywillow]

Welcome to the PC Guide Forums!!

DOS drivers for your CD drives? Error Code 7? I think you're making this a bit more complicated than it needs to be. WinXP doesn't use DOS at all, so for starters, you should completely wipe the hard drive and start over. Download Seagate's DiscWizard Starter Edition (for making a bootable floppy) and delete all partition info on the hard drive. You can also use DiscWizard to partition your hard drive if you so desire, or Windows can do it for you. Whatever you want.

Once the hard drive is "fresh" again, take out the floppy and put in the WinXP CD. If the problem was with the previous data on the hard drive, everything should go smoothly now. If not, report back with the new symptoms.

Computers are fun!!

Yes I'll wipe the lot and start again, thanks. Sure I'll report back.

[Pussywillow]

What do you mean by finding DOS drivers for the CD drives? All you should need to do to install Windows XP is set one of the CD drives to boot first in BIOS, stick an XP CD in there and install. No more need to find drivers, boot to DOS, and start the install from there.

Erik what I meant was that the instal got stuck at the 'windows is loading' point. I assumed (falsely I hope) that it was something to do with the system not recognising the CD, and hence it couldn't - or wouldn't push the instal any further than that.

Am going to strip the HDD down as suggested and start again.

[cteas]

So, your saying that XP dies during the installation. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt your HDD partitioning is the culprit. The easiest thing is to make sure the CD is clean and scratch free. The next thing is to make sure the optical drive isn't dropping out on you, and the last thing is that your HDD is having a failure. It could be many other problems, but from what I've heard so far these are the first things I would check. The other guys are definitely wright about CD drivers. You should never deal with them. That's XP's job. I would start again as well, but do it by inserting the CD, making sure the bios is set to boot the CD, and following directions. XP formats the HDD for you if you want it too.

[Pussywillow]

Thanks everybody it all works now.

I wiped the HDD using killdisk, then disks x 2 Seagate disk wizrd to partition and format.

Windows went on ok initially (error 7 did make a reappearance) and was ok for about an hour or so until I changed the Cd drive to a DVD-Rom and added a PCI card (Netgear).

It crashed big time. Removed what I thought were the offending articles and it worked....reloaded WinXP and - touch wood- it works fine, internet the lot.

(I also noticed the heatsink was very hot so I stripped it all out and replaced the fan.)

In conclusion I suspect that maybe I did make a bit of a meal of it, but then it has taken so long to get this far, when my first build went so smoothly. I have learnt a lot, thanks again everybody.