Need help with XP home edition

[Mit0]

Hi, I'm new here so yeah.
I need some help with windows xp home edition. I am kinda new to building computers and well I had my friend help me build my first computer. Well we got it to work and everything, the computer loaded fine. After I installed a couple of drivers and restarted the computer. Well everything looked normal, like I didn't see any error messages, and when it got to the Windows Xp load screen, the black screen with the logo. The computer just sits there, nothing happens. So any help would be great. Sorry for the long story, but here is my computer specs, hope it helps

AMD 64 Athlon 4000+
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe NF4
Maxtor 80 Gb Serial ATA
Maxtor 200 Gb Serial ATA
2 Gb of RAM

 

[Obtruse_Man4]

Before you get to the XP load screen, tap F8. This will bring up a menu with different options of how you want to boot XP. Try choosing the last known working state (or whatever it's called). Hope that helps.

 

[Mit0]

Well I did what you said, but all it opened up was the boot priority, or the menu that allows me to change which device i want to boot up first, its set at CDROM, HARD DISK, and REMOVABLE Drive. Also when I exited that screen, the computer now won't even get to the XP loading screen. I turned off the computer and put in the windows xp cd, but I didn't load the cd, I just let the computer do what it had to do. Well it went to the screen that tells you "Sorry for the inconvenience..." and it gives me choices to choose, like start in safe mode, with networking, with command prompt, last know good working config. and start normally. I chosed the last working config, but it still doesnt load. Also when I restart my computer after the long load, the computer doesnt see the 80 gb harddrive, is this a problem with the hard drive or with the software? P.S. thanks for the reply back

 

[Obtruse_Man4]

Do you have a different HDD to use? Or try the HDD in this bad machine on another computer. You could try repairing xp. Sounds like windows isn't booting correctly. So it's either a hdd problem or something software wise.

 

[Mit0]

Well, remember how I said I could get to that "Sorry for the inconvenience..." screen. Well I chose the option to load windows in safe mode and I was able to load windows, so I don't know why I'm able to load in safe mode but not start up normally. Also I was thinking about what you said, about changing the hard drive. Well I'll try to use only the 200 gb, because I was told you try just one harddrive and I tried the 80 gb, but that didn't work. So I'm going to try the 200 only. If that doesn't work, is it a problem with my hard drives? Or is it still hard to tell if its either software or hardware problems. Sorry frustrating anybody, I'm a newbie at this.

 

[microsoftne]

Driver issue... if you successfully booted into safe mode then the drives sound ok...

 

[derrmc]

what drivers did you load? maybe it's them. uninstall them in safe mode one at a time

 

[Mit0]

I was told to make a Silicon SATA RAID Driver Disk (I was able to do that by booting the motherboard cd and copying those files onto a floppy), and install that when installing Windows XP, for my SATA HDDs. Then from the motherboard cd, I installed the Nvidia Chipset Driver, AMD Cool'n'Quiet Driver. Then I installed the drivers from the video card cd and the drivers from the sound card cd. Thats all the drivers I installed.

 

[Mit0]

I tried to uninstall the drivers that I did install, but for some reason, some of the drivers won't uninstall because I'm in safe mode, like the driver for the nvidia ethernet. But I uninstalled most of the drivers, and well that didn't work, what I will try though is try installing XP on my 200 gb harddrive to see if that works.