if anyone actually reads all of this, and gives me feedback, i would absolutely love it. thank you for your time!
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i finally got to together my pc.
these are the parts:
- Thermaltake Soprano VB1430BWS Black Steel Case
- DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D
- eVGA 256-P2-N376-AX Geforce 6800GT
- OCZ ModStream OCZ52012U ATX 520W
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
- OCZ Gold Series 1GB (2 x 512MB)
- Seagate Barracuda 250GB HD
- NEC Black IDE DVD Burner
- SAMSUNG Floppy Drive
next i try to install windows...
i pop in the disc, boot from the cd. the installation starts. it asks if i want to install 3rd part sata raid drivers, so i hit F6 and it says please put a disc into drive A:\ and hit enter when ready. so i do this and i hit enter, but it doesn't install the drivers because it just brings me back to the screen i was just at (please put a disc into A:\...). so i dont install the drivers because i guess my pc isn't recognizing my FDD (even though i see the light blinking on it like it is trying to do something), but i keep on going with the windows installation.
it formats the HD fine, then it starts copying files. in the middle of the copying a blue screen comes up. this blue screen gives me this error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. i didn't know what this meant, so i rebooted my pc and tried again. this time when it tried to boot from the cd, instead of booting from the cd it said "NTLDR is missing." i didn't know what this meant either.
i ended up google'ing these errors and found some possible resolutions for my problems. i tried entering the winxp recovery program and typing fixboot and fixmbr (even though i don't have an OS installed, but there is a \WINDOWS\ folder on the c:\ drive). i don't know if these worked or not, but whatever.
so after i did this, i opened up my pc and turned ide cables around and whatnot and checked jumpers on my cdrom and hdd. reboot...
now i get a blue screen again, with almost the same error as before. however, this time it says DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. ok, so now i'm furious that i'm getting all these errors and i don't know what the hell they mean. another reboot. now i try to boot from my FD to install the raid drivers and that still doesn't work (PC not recognizing FDD still, even though i see it in the bios?). ok so now i talk to some people and find out that it might be a ram problem...
so now i take out the awesome RAM i just bought (OCZ Gold Series 1GB (2 x 512MB)) and replace it with the current RAM in this pc (corsair platinum edition 2x256MB). not happy with this, i turn on my pc and try booting windows up again. again, i hit F6 to try and install the raid drivers, which ended up as another failed attempt. so i'm in the winxp installation process again and it starts copying all the files since i already formatted the HD. and it gets through copying and restarts my pc and begins really installing xp.
SO apparently it IS a RAM problem because my shitty, really dusty, several year old corsair ram works and the new 1g ocz gold series does not. strange...
but it doesn't end there.
so now windows is successfully installed, i think
i start installing vpu drivers, chipset drivers, etc. still can't install raid drivers. now i check the C:\ driver and see that it says "Free Space: 125GB." this is a 250GB drive! i HOPE that it only says 125GB because the sata raid drivers are not installed yet...
and right now i think that is it. windows is installed on it, but it is useless right now because there is no ram in it at the moment, the FDD apparently doesn't work and the HD is only using about half of what it is supposed to be using!!!1
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the end =)
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i finally got to together my pc.
these are the parts:
- Thermaltake Soprano VB1430BWS Black Steel Case
- DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D
- eVGA 256-P2-N376-AX Geforce 6800GT
- OCZ ModStream OCZ52012U ATX 520W
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice
- OCZ Gold Series 1GB (2 x 512MB)
- Seagate Barracuda 250GB HD
- NEC Black IDE DVD Burner
- SAMSUNG Floppy Drive
next i try to install windows...
i pop in the disc, boot from the cd. the installation starts. it asks if i want to install 3rd part sata raid drivers, so i hit F6 and it says please put a disc into drive A:\ and hit enter when ready. so i do this and i hit enter, but it doesn't install the drivers because it just brings me back to the screen i was just at (please put a disc into A:\...). so i dont install the drivers because i guess my pc isn't recognizing my FDD (even though i see the light blinking on it like it is trying to do something), but i keep on going with the windows installation.
it formats the HD fine, then it starts copying files. in the middle of the copying a blue screen comes up. this blue screen gives me this error: IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. i didn't know what this meant, so i rebooted my pc and tried again. this time when it tried to boot from the cd, instead of booting from the cd it said "NTLDR is missing." i didn't know what this meant either.
i ended up google'ing these errors and found some possible resolutions for my problems. i tried entering the winxp recovery program and typing fixboot and fixmbr (even though i don't have an OS installed, but there is a \WINDOWS\ folder on the c:\ drive). i don't know if these worked or not, but whatever.
so after i did this, i opened up my pc and turned ide cables around and whatnot and checked jumpers on my cdrom and hdd. reboot...
now i get a blue screen again, with almost the same error as before. however, this time it says DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. ok, so now i'm furious that i'm getting all these errors and i don't know what the hell they mean. another reboot. now i try to boot from my FD to install the raid drivers and that still doesn't work (PC not recognizing FDD still, even though i see it in the bios?). ok so now i talk to some people and find out that it might be a ram problem...
so now i take out the awesome RAM i just bought (OCZ Gold Series 1GB (2 x 512MB)) and replace it with the current RAM in this pc (corsair platinum edition 2x256MB). not happy with this, i turn on my pc and try booting windows up again. again, i hit F6 to try and install the raid drivers, which ended up as another failed attempt. so i'm in the winxp installation process again and it starts copying all the files since i already formatted the HD. and it gets through copying and restarts my pc and begins really installing xp.
SO apparently it IS a RAM problem because my shitty, really dusty, several year old corsair ram works and the new 1g ocz gold series does not. strange...
but it doesn't end there.
so now windows is successfully installed, i think
i start installing vpu drivers, chipset drivers, etc. still can't install raid drivers. now i check the C:\ driver and see that it says "Free Space: 125GB." this is a 250GB drive! i HOPE that it only says 125GB because the sata raid drivers are not installed yet...
and right now i think that is it. windows is installed on it, but it is useless right now because there is no ram in it at the moment, the FDD apparently doesn't work and the HD is only using about half of what it is supposed to be using!!!1
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the end =)