XP Pro installation on Asus A8V Deluxe problem

[fosterman]

Hi all.

My specs are:

CasEdge Diabolic Minotaur with 400W PSU

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Skt 939 Winchester Core
Asus A8V Deluxe Bios 1007
Crucial 256MB PC-2100 DIMM RAM
XFX GeForce 6600GT 128MB AGP 8x G/Card
40 GB ATA 100 IDE Hard Drive
LG DVD Reader, CD R/W Combo
Soundblaster Audigy 2(?) (Not Platinum. I forget what it's called for the moment).


Problem No. 1 of 2: The PSU supplied with the case does not power up the system whatsoever. The green LED lights up upon insertion of the power cable, but when I press the switch on the front of the case nothing happens. So to combat that I am currently using my 300W PSU which seems to work fine. The 400W PSU that came with the case does however work on a Pentium 1.6 GHz system... Very odd indeed.

Ok, so having overcome that (my old PC333 RAM didn't work with the new mobo, but that's because I am an ignoramus) I was then lulled into a sense of false security...

Problem 2 of 2 (The saga continues): Windows XP would not boot from my HD, so I put in the XP Pro CD and re-formatted (full NTFS format), and so it started putting all the required files on the HD.

(another note: it seemed to take a stupidly long time to read from the CD, but I don't know where the provenance of that problem would be).

As is the process of XP, it needed to reboot in order to continue and complete the installation. Upon re-booting, it repeated exactly the same process as if nothing had been done previously, whereas on my old system (with the same HD) there would be normally be an option to continue with the setup.

Hideously frustrating as you can imagine. I hope it's not the HD.
If it is then it gives me an excuse to beef the system up some more so I can waste my precious hours killing people online in high resolution.

I look forward to enlightenment.

P.S : Having said that, when I put together my old system with that HD, it took an inordinately long time to start Windows XP; there was an excessive amount of hard drive activity. This was probably down to the registry, but that's another issue which I don't want addressed here.

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Try taking the CD out when the computer reboots for one, this helps it sometimes (or at least I think)

Also, you NEED new ram. It will bottleneck your system like no tommorow

 

[PP Mguire]

Ok if everybody didnt know i will say it. Xp ALWAYS needs to be re-installed after a mobo or cpu change. Its casue the regisrty in XP. Dont ask me cause i dont know the deails but i do know that for sure.

 

[fosterman]

Thanks for the swift replies, but unfortunately neither answer the question fully. I know XP needs a reinstall; removing the CD from the tray doesn't help either, after the initial installation has been completed and I reboot the computer.

It looked like the HD simply will not allow itself to be read. I verified this by putting Windows 98 in my system, which was on a different HD that is known to work (my neighbour happens to be a bit of a retired techie so bonus there). Windows 98 had trouble reading my HD (it didn't find it at all ; no mount??).

****************************************************Also at the BIOS section it takes ages to try and read the Hard Drive (my one) so I don't know whether there is something physically damaged on the drive like a boot sector....
****************************************************

So he put the HD on one of his computers that had Windows XP and formatted the HD with the NTFS (what does it mean by the way? N.T File System as far as I can guess).

I am going to install it tonight and see if it gives me any trouble.
The Crucial 256MB PC-2100 should be enough to start it up though, so I don't think it's a memory problem.

Cheers


Post Scriptum: By the way can anyone figure out the P.S.U problem in my first post? That is a black art one I think.