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the_blade

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I cant get Windos XP to load...

Ok, here is the situation.  I am upgrading a friends Dell computer.  The only parts I am taking from it are a 37 gig IBM deskstar hard drive, DVD rom, CDRW and a floppy drive. And these are the parts I just bought:

-ABIT NV7-133R motherboard.  Socket A Nforce chip with onboard sound, and LAN.  USB 2.0 and RAID.
-AMD XP 1900+
- 2 sticks of corsair 256 meg DDR 2100 CAS 2.0
- Enermax case with 300 watt power supply, with extra 4 pin ATX connector needed for the motherboard.

Ok, now here is the situation, I am trying to install windows XP, it boots fine from the CD and starts the installtion.  As it is copying files, it errors upon copying on about 20 of the files, AND they are different files every time.

Here is what I did to troubleshoot it:
I disabled all integrated peri. I could in BIOS including the RAID (hard drive is on the normal IDE connector), USB 2.0, LAN, and sound.  I set my memory latency to AUTO (I tried 2.0, same errors).

1.I tried first the CD, all of my copies of XP that I KNOW work all errored.
2. I tried different CD rom and DVD rom that I know works, same error.
3. I tried replacing the cable, hard drive and cdrom cable, same error.
4. I replaced the hard drive with my personal one, still errors.
5. I tried clocking down the processor and RAM, same errors.
6. I tried XP home and Professional (they are the same at the point where my errors occur), same errors.
7. I HAVE NOT tried the RAM, motherboard or processor, nothing tells me that these parts are bad.  I read many reviews about the board and they all gave the same review: the most stable board Abit has ever made.

I have no clue what can be causing the errors, I obviously cant install Windows XP all the way if it cant install drivers.cab and so on.  The files are never the same, always different .dll files and .inf or .acs or whatever.  I dont want it to be a simple "bad motherboard" solution because that is crap, the board works.  I am working on flashing the bios, but Abit didnt say anything about the problem I am having as a fix for the new bios.  It just simply recognizes the 2100+.    Thanks!


Avatar of magarity
magarity

"all of my copies of XP"

How many copies do you have, anyway?  I assume you mean these are CD-R disks?  Where is your original(s)?  Do you know EE's policy specifically forbids us from helping you install unlicensed software so you'll need to do some explaining as to what you mean here.
Avatar of the_blade

ASKER

I own 4 licenses of windows XP.  2 home edition, and 2 professional.   One for each of the computers I own.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of pjknibbs
pjknibbs

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When Windows XP is installing, the operating system will try to recognize your hardware and install the available driver to it. So, when some hardware like RAM happens to be defect winndows setup will facing some problems like what happen to you. Therefor, plz check ur hardware probably, especially RAM as what been said by "pjknibbs"
I agree memory is a good first suspect.  To test it, use Memtest86 from www.memtest86.com
Has the manufacturer released a BIOS update to address WindowsXP compatibility?  (No need to gratuitously update BIOS if not)
Dare I say it ? Dodgy ram is the main culprit for lockups during installation. Swap it out if you can.
awesome, thank you very much guys
awesome troubleshooting