Trap 00000006 Exception during XP Setup

in your post you said you use "a SATA HDD and it isnt configured properly in the BIOS"
I think you should first fix this problem; if it cannot be fixed, you will allways have problems

Thanks for the replies,

I have tried using just one stick of memory like you say and still the same problems occur.  I will try to get hold of some RAM that defintely works for another test.  It will be difficult for me to try my HDD in another machine as I don't know anyone else who uses SATA.

I am going to test another IDE HDD that a friend is letting me borrow, in my machine to see what happens.

I'll keep you updated.

try to install your xp with only one drive attached; if this does not work, try a copy of your XP cd.
Test all hardware if possible on another system, you could have more than one issue

I'm using a 400W PSU and the capacitors on my mobo aren't bent or look bad at all (plus my mobo is only a few months old) so I'm pretty confident it isn't these.  I'll let you know how the HDD test goes later :)

since you had problems from day one, maybe it's a good idea to return it under warranty, and have a new one.

Hmm, well that's going to be my last resort. At the moment I'm running 'Memtest86+' so far with no errors but how long is this supposed to take!? So long it's been running 8 hours and passed 14.  Is this normal?

Actually, you run it for as long as you want - it doesn't stop until you say so.  8 hours is a good length of time to think the memory's ok, but remember, it isn't as final a test as swapping in RAM that you know works.

The size of the PSU is no guarantee that it isn't faulty or inadequate.  A swap is the only way, other than a PSU tester: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=561263

hi sarahth,
try to reinstall your windows using the seagte's tool disk wizard,,,it must help by installing new harddrives:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html
but choose the floppy disk based

DiscWizard Starter Edition

cu

unfortunately I have no extra RAM to test but i left memtest running all night and it's at 20 hours with no errors so I think all my hopes are on the hard disk.  By the way I tried the Seagate hard disk tester software and I think it hangs, because at the screen where it says soemthing like type 1 to "Skip loading ACPI" something, type 2...type drmouse etc...Whatever I seem to type it does nothing :(

Would you advise running the PSU tester before I try the IDE hard disk?

if the disc test is giving problems, i suggest returning it under warranty, as i already said.
You're going to have more problems than joy with it...

well after i've tested the new hard disk, if i get a successful result, then I think that's gonna have to happen.  Let Seagate sort it out!  Thanks for all of your help everyone, it is much appreciated :) i'm going to leave this open for a little while though just incase the hard disk test doesn't work.  

Thanks again for your continued and excellent support.

I attached the new hard disk which already had different OS installed (XP Pro) and also just 'Microsoft Windows'.  It gave me the option to choose, and whichever I chose, the old error - black screen, no loading screen.  So now I'm guessing it isn't the hard disk after all.

I got a copy of "PC Check" from college and am in the process of running a few tests.  All of the Processor tests passed but after running the "Non Volatile Memory and CMOS Clock Tests" in the Motherboard section I recieved a FAIL on "Clock Ticking" and also "Clock Synchronicity".  The Status Registers test also says "Non Std"...?

Does this shine any more light on the situation?

it sounds for me like to check the synchronisation between ram and cpu ,,,check this very settings in the manual there is a mismatch between cpu fsb clock and ram clock,,,

All it says in the manual is that you can up the voltage settings or keep it at "Normal", there are no recommended settings - just warnings if you put it above normal.  Now even PC Check isnt loading, just hngs on detecting hardware.  I've tried a couple of win98 boot disk aswell, just to see if i could get to do fdisk there but no luck. It either brings up jibberish ASCII characters where the DOS prompt should load, or it gives me an A: prompt and wont let me type anything into it.

Emailing Gigabyte seeing as the fails on PC Check indicated it was the motherboard...

Hi sarahth,
well PC Check is not a bad diagnostic tool,,,
if you have still warranty on the mobo just send it back to your vendors  and take new one(as nobus).
it will take a little longer but you'll know for real where is the problem,,,
post back your comments !

cu

If you attached a new hard drive with an OS already on it, you have to do a repair install to update the IDE and video card drivers; otherwise, it will probably fail.  http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_install.htm

tried the above and the trap exception error comes back...

i really dont know what to do, I cant send my board back to the retailer because I've broken just about every one of their return policies, "no opened software" "valid RMA number" blah blah...and oh, here's the reply I got from Gigabyte:

"Hello Sir

I would recommed that you try to use different type of memory and install XP again.

The memory may be faulty."

Told them i have no additional memory + I'd tested it with memtest for 24hours and pc check both with no errors and that I'm getting errors with "Non Volatile Memory and CMOS Clock Tests" on the mobo section so lets see if their next suggestion is any different.

Sorry for such a dragged-out problem, I think I'm getting on evrybody's nerves with this, nevermind my own, lol - I can't believe a system as new as mine can go so bad so easily! btw absolutely nothing except memtest boots and works now, everything hangs.  Still a healthy post though! hmm...

>>>   I cant send my board back to the retailer because I've broken just about every one of their return policies, "no opened software" "valid RMA number" blah blah...and oh, here's the reply I got from Gigabyte:   <<< what has this to do with warranty? you cannot be expected to set up and test a system without opening boxes and software.

I still say, return it under warranty, since it never worked as it should !

....and i would suggest, do not hesitate to post your problems, and the way you think about them; we are here to support you, not to gain anything from it


(what'd i say?...what'd i say?)

Ah, "no opened software" does not apply to hardware like motherboards and the drivers needed to set them up.  You should not back down from expecting a working motherboard.

Hi sarahth,

i found also a microsoft link such theese ,which you have already read:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/128730/EN-US/    ,,,,but i found there,that it could be also :
1) you have a boot virus
2) you have some extra software installed on your system like :antivirus or a boot manager (but personally really doubt it),which could "help" the bad reading of the system files on your hdd,,, please read the m$ article and try to remember if you have done such kind of changes to your system,,,

The funny thing is ,this article is applied to win 95 and win 98 and NOT! for any other windows sytems of greater rank,,,
though i decided to paste here the link for you ,cuz i'm personally out of other reasonable ideas,,,so what to do :
- check in the BIOS if Virus Protection is enabled ,if so then disable it,,,
- go to the seagate's homepage and download the low-level-formatting tool, ,:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html    ,make sure to download the Bootable Floppy Diskette Creator !
http://support.seagate.com/dwregister  -when you register the tool !! TYPE THERE THE MODEL OF YOUR SATA HDD !!

then erase th eboot sector of your hdd and make additionally a low-level-format of your segate sata drive.
firstly make a diagnostic for the disk and be very careful by the low-level-formatting;read carefully all warnings/messages and be sure not to try to power-off your system while making the low-level-formatting!as you see the successful mesage for formatting is welldone then you can exit the program and power-off /restart the pc,,,
try to make a new windows installation.

read firstly the low-level-formatting FAQ:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/faq/ata_llfmt_what.html

Good Luck!
later!

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it later and see what happens seeing as I'm getting such 'fantastic' support from Gigabyte...heh.

I know that virus protection is definitely disabled in the BIOS Q-Flash part.  I also shorted/reset the CMOS, this gave a one-off checksum error and said defaults were loaded - checked it, it worked, loaded fail safe defaults...same prob, lol.  One thing to add though - I'm now getting the TRAP 6 EXCEPTION error at the very start of the WinXP setup instead of at one of the early blue screens.  Not sure what this means, if anything.

Thanks again!

Hi sarah,
have you installed also additional software like emulation programs or cd/dvd software or did you had any problems with driveres for any newly added hardware,,,
any way if you wish try the low-level-formatting,but reda carefully all the istructions to be aware of this stuff,,,
good luck!

later!

sorry for not replying for a while!

i havent tried the low level formatting but my friend let me try his working ddr400 ram in my machine and I got the same problem so it's definitely not the ram.

i also tried his floppy drive on mine seeing as the windows setup seems to hang when it detects mine. same problem. something strange which happened by chance though, when i tried to boot from xp disk again - i got the trap exception error which was split up in sections down the screen with jibberish and I got a clear error message at the bottom reading: "<Windows root>system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file".

any more suggestions?

i've told gigabyte the same thing above ^ see if I get anymore help from them.

(oh i've been trying to get intouch with supplier but they just ironically replied to my email saying they dont reply to emails anymore.  I'll keep trying their very busy phone lines...)

>>  "<Windows root>system32\hal.dll. Please re-install a copy of the above file".  <<   LOOK here :

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm        (halfway down)

sorry for leaving this post so long, may aswell update you on whats going on with my system...

I sent my motherboard back and recieved a gigabyte GAK8NSXP which is like the next 754socket model up from my K8NS Pro.  I checked everything is compatible with it and re-built my system. Guess what, same single beep post, same trap error, but before Windows setup can even start this time; immediately after the "Inspecting hardware configuration" so it's on the black and white screen this time for a change.

So i've tested another FDD, HDD (IDE instead of SATA), Motherboard, RAM (aswell as the extensive test on my own RAM), that leaves PSU, CD-ROM and CPU, or it could be some kind of anti-windows voodoo spell on the case...any suggestions?

I'll try the low level formatting again with this new mobo, see if that works.

Thanks :)

hi  sarah,
please can you try with an another processor,if you can borrow or?
two different motherboards,,,i'm qiute considered suspecting the cpu,,,
there are also some good diagnostic tools like : "PC CHECK" and from Micro 2000."MicroScope",thus you can check all your hardware,,,
if you can try swapping the psu too ,but please leave as first this low-level-formatting ,you have done this severeal times befora,right?this will be last option,,,

make you reply!
good luck!

well i got the latest version of PC Check and it worked, (turns out the old floppy disk was corrupted) tested everything and it passed EVERYTHING, unbelievable. Literally unbelievable so I tried it all again, CPU, memory, mobo, hard disk, floppy, cdrom...all tests passed every time.

This new motherboard is also recognising the hard disk straight away everytime, it never disappears in the BIOS.  An interesting new message appears though if i leave it to boot from the hard disk (instead of the normal blank screen I used to get); "No operating system installed" or something to that nature.

I thought great, the problem may be fixed...so all I have to do is install it, so I put in my xp CD (my newest one including sp2) and it hung several times either on the hardware abstraction layer part or the kernel.dll part - similar to as it did before but this time without the TRAP error.  I tried my dad's xp (with sp2) disk - same.  I tried an old xp (sp1a) disk and suprisingly it got a little further but still hung when it was loading apci (or something like that) drivers.  I tested all disks several times with the same result.

Also ^ when setup starts, it never hangs on the floppy anymore, it checks it as it should and proceeds a little further.

I thought seeing as all my hardware tested as OK, it really might be a corrupted ntldr file so I tried a 98 boot disk and managed to get a C: prompt, but it wouldnt format or fdisk - i'll try to get the error message again for you.

Also tried the Seagate discwizard again from several floppys and this hangs everytime, it could be due to bad floppys but i tried them straight after the prgram was written on to them so it's doubtful. Suggest just trying another IDE hard disk again seeing as I'm not getting any errors on PC Check?

Get a copy of Knoppix Linux Live CD no matter what version 3.4 ~ 3.7 and test the system ,,,if it also fails then see that you probably must replace the hdd \

cu

tried that also, hangs on a black screen when you press enter to boot from the knoppix logo screen. what if the new HDD doesnt work...

can't believe so much has gone wrong! can't find anyone on the net who has a similar problem.

fingers crossed when i try a new HD it'll be okay!

Thankyou.

sarah,,,
try  the
80GB SAMSUNG SP0812C  7200rpm, 8MB-Cache, SATA-150, 8,9ms

Good luck!

aha! new error message, lol. I tested everthing again with PC Check for the sake, all fine.

I switched SATA ports from 0 to 1 on the mobo and tried knoppix again - this time i got an error message saying: "Kernel BUG at page_alloc.c:233!" then some jibberish about flags and things and then the last line reads: "<0> Kernel Panic: Attempted to kill init!"

I have never used linux before...does this shine any light on my problem? the word 'BUG' worried me.

I'll add a little more of the jibberish part that was included in the message, all of the following are placed in between the two things i mentioned above:

CPU: 0
EIP:0010....Not Tainted
Eflags:....
eax:...
esi:...
ds:...
Process Swapper...
Stack:...
Call Trace:...
code:0f 0b b9 00 e1 2f 26 c0 8b 46 18 a8 40 74 08 0f 0b eb 00 e1

incase that helps :)

All your errors occur when you try to access your hard drive - did you re-use the cable from your first troubled motherboard?  If so, try a new one.

it says for me :it cant install the kernel ,cuz it can't compile the following source file as mentioned in the ram,,,
and this makes me mad -cuz knoppix do not use harddrive ,,,

Hey Sarah, i read through the posts, and there was one thing i missed :
did you test the memory? try memtest86+ from     http://www.memtest.org/
it's free, so it won't cost you; and yes, i know you ran PC check but try this one to humour me...

Also, i feel a short overview of what you did, and what you changed can help here, since the thread is getting long; so what is new now ? and what did you use from the previous system?

"i left memtest running all night and it's at 20 hours with no errors" (from a previous post) - this was the memtest 86+ version on my old mobo.

(BARE IN MIND THIS IS MY OLD K8NS PRO MOBO ...)
i'll have a go at a brief overview: firstly my system always used to come up with Boot from CD "Invalid system disk" on first boot everytime, however it would boot second time no problems and it would run very well.

ran for about 3months perfectly in this time i'd installed up-to-date drivers and bios flashes (using Gigabytes @BIOS program), the last thing I installed was a chipset driver.  This driver caused the ONLY ever crash on my system, i got a blue screen when playing a game and can't remember the exact message but it was about the chipset driver malfunctioning and it said it got stuck in a "loop" and was dumping memory from bank to bank.

i reset the machine and used "last known good configuration", it ran fine for two-three sessions (still with the "Invalid system disk" on first boot). I then got a BSOD when i was just talking on msn and the machine reset itself never to load windows again :'(

(THEN I TRIED MEMTEST, AND LOADSA OTHER THINGS AND FOUND ON PC CHECK I WAS GETTING A MOTHERBOARD FAIL: CLOCK SYNCHRONICITY AND CLOCK TICKING.  GOT A NEW MOTHERBOARD - K8NSNXP)
i still get same problem during windows setup when it cant load the drivers or kernels when it actually starts setup + win98 bootdisk wont format or fdisk + seagate discwizard hangs + PC Check PASSES everything. Infact the only thing I havent tried on my pc now is a different graphics card/processor or PSU. i havent tried different memory on this new motherboard either but i did on my old one - same prob.

i mean the PSU is 400W but it's a real no-make cheap thing - came with the "iCute" case which is no better, i'll be getting an Antec case and Antec 480W PSU soon.  but could it really be a PSU issue? the fan doesnt stop spinning on my current one and its not overheating.

am i just cursed?

Sorry if i made you repeat some things, just trying to line up the things done already.
Now : if the disc is already formatted with the XP setup, did you choose NTFS or FAT for formatting? i suppose  you know that the win 98 disks cannot read NTFS discs, so if you want to try, you must repeat the XP setup, from scratch, and choose FAT32 for formatting; then you will be able to use the same disc for formatting in Win98.
you also say: seagate disc wizard hangs, so maybe time for another tool, try DBAN for a change to clean your disc, then partition and format it with win 98 or win xp :


http://dban.sourceforge.net/

omg of course...i did it in NTFS, thats prob why win98 dint work :D lol. i'll try dban, thanks!

i'll listen !

i am starting to doubt,are theese all issues regarding to a cpu problem,cuz two different motherboards -same problem,knoppix fails to install,this linux distri don't need even a presented hdd,so failing to install the kernel and build the virtual memory drive makes me doubt in the current cpu,,,
sarah ,is there a chance to borrow a cpu with the same socket and test it on your new system?
your current one is  AMD 3200+ 64bit CPU , it will be little difficult ,,,
it could also be a psu issue. \

well i'll buy the new psu soon as im paid - oh and hey, guess what, DBAN doesnt work. again a problem loading kernels.

i dunno why but it just feels like memory, i got almost exactly the same error as the knoppix one with DBAN after the "Uncompressing Linux...Ok, booting kernel. Please wait..." screen. So i took the first stick of memory out n tried again.

I got a small error message saying "ata4 failed to respond (30secs) segementation fault" ata4...doesnt ata have something to do with hard disks?

and then i put the second stick in the 3rd slot and got: "Segmentation fault Segmentation fault <1> Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 04638d74 eip:c011eb07 (not tainted) segmentation fault" + lots of jibberish - the error message is structured exactly the same as the knoppix error. seeing as it says virtual address - is that related to RAM?

I also tried the 1st stick in the 3rd slot and a similar error occured. i'm confused @.@

oh and borrowing a 64bit processor...no chance. but if u guys really think its the cpu then i'll have to see if i can take it to some kinda shop who'll have good gadgets to test on it.

Sarah ,i don't know why dion't you try 64-bit distri:
,,,the 64-bit edition of windows :
https://microsoft.order-9.com/winxp64/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=MSTrialandEval&category%5Fname=winxp64&product%5Fid=winxp64&id=dl
you can download the system for free and test it for a year but you must firstly register!
if you can't download the windows try out one of theese linux distris:
-fedora linux core 3
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/iso/
-mandrake 9.2 for AMD64
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/92amd64beta.php3  it's a downloadable beta!"
-Suse Linux 9.0/9.1 Professional Edition 64 Bit
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0001MBCP4/scriptspub-20/002-7105719-3152848?dev-t=1BCWDG4E03V4JWRT2M82%26camp=2025%26link_code=xm2
-Turbolinux 8 for AMD64
http://www.turbolinux.com/products/tl8a/

cu

RMA'd the CPU, and...it works!!! Thank you so much everyone for all of your help.

I appreciate it so much.

Thanks!