Cannot install OS on P4GE-MX

  • Thread starter Thread starter Toney
  • Start date Start date
T

Toney

I am having a heck of a time installing an OS on this mobo. I have a
Celeron 2Ghz CPU and I've tried 2 256MB PC2100 DIMMs and 1 512MB PC2700
DIMM. (All memory by Viking). I've used a CD ROM and a DVD ROM, and
several different hard disks.

When installing Windows XP Home, I get numerous "failed to copy file"
messages during install, an never get a working codebase.

With Linux, I can install a generic Debian Woody 3.0 with a 2.2.20
kernel, and that works. But if I try to upgrade to Debian testing or
compile a custom kernel, I get kernel panics.

Does anyone have experience with this board? Is the Intel 845GE/ICH4
chip set somehow peculiar?

I would welcome any pointers.

AHA,

Toney
 
Toney said:
I am having a heck of a time installing an OS on this mobo. I have a
Celeron 2Ghz CPU and I've tried 2 256MB PC2100 DIMMs and 1 512MB PC2700
DIMM. (All memory by Viking). I've used a CD ROM and a DVD ROM, and
several different hard disks.

When installing Windows XP Home, I get numerous "failed to copy file"
messages during install, an never get a working codebase.

With Linux, I can install a generic Debian Woody 3.0 with a 2.2.20
kernel, and that works. But if I try to upgrade to Debian testing or
compile a custom kernel, I get kernel panics.

Does anyone have experience with this board? Is the Intel 845GE/ICH4
chip set somehow peculiar?

I would welcome any pointers.

AHA,

Toney
Click to expand...

Hmmm... Providing your cd readers/discs are clean, I've only seen this
on name brand systems. Like trying to install a regular copy of xp on a
compaq computer, it's a no go, unless you have the actual compaq cd. If
this isn't the case, make sure your settings in bios indicate "auto" in
all your hd and cdrom transfer mode, this will cure most transfer
errors. There are multiple possibilities, bad cable? Loose connection?
Weak power supply? Dying ide ports? Check everything again, use a lens
cleaner for your optical drive, run scandisk from the winxp boot cd (get
the command prompt, or make a boot disk with another computer).

Other than that, I don't know what it could be... Keep us posted...
 
Use memtest86 (from memtest.org - minimum 5 cycles and no errors) to prove
you are not getting memroy errors.
since you tried 2 sets of memory, it could be the mobo, cmos settings, or
possibly even psu.
If there is a lot of stuff plugged in, strip down to minium and check load
against psu supply rail ratings (on the side of it).

so, cmos clear (its in the manual), reset bios settings, and check bios
version.
the ich4 did not AFAIK have any weirdness on this front.

BOL.
 
Thank you and Browser Joe for your posts.

I believe I've toasted the BIOS from resetting CMOS numerous times. The
machine will not boot. I get the ASUS screen, but pressing <Tab> does
not take me to the POST screen, and pressing <Del> causes it to say
"Entering Setup", but it never actually goes to setup. Does this mean I
need to get a new BIOS ROM or flash chip, or is there anything I can do
to get the BIOS to boot?

Thanks,

Toney
 
It just means taht the BIOS is searching for something.

You can test by using different hard disk, detach CD,
change the RAM slot, or even change the floppy.

Or, the RAID in ON so it is looking for the disk(s).


-----------
 
Thank you very much. I reattched some things, and the BIOS is alive
well. I still haven't been able to get windows installed, but at least
I'm back in the game.

Cheers,

Toney
 
Toney said:
Thank you very much. I reattched some things, and the BIOS is alive
well. I still haven't been able to get windows installed, but at least
I'm back in the game.
Click to expand...

Have you tried to copy the CD to the hard drive and installing from
there? That was Microsoft's solution when I had similar problems.
After the OS was installed I never had any further problems.
 
Thank you for the suggestion. What process did you use to copy the install CD to
hard disk? Did you xcopy under a working Windows install? After copying, does
the boot into the install the way the CD does?

Thanks,


Toney
 
V. Tony Jones said:
Thank you for the suggestion. What process did you use to copy the install CD to
hard disk? Did you xcopy under a working Windows install? After copying, does
the boot into the install the way the CD does?
Click to expand...

In my case I had a working copy of Windows 2000 and used Windows
Explorer to drag and drop the directories. From there I ran the setup
program. You could probably do the same using a boot disk and xcopy as
long as you made sure that all the files and directories were copied.
 
To all the generous members of this newsgroup who have responded:

Short answer:

The problem turned out to be a bad or incompatible memory module, as
well as a hard disk that for some reason would not take a Windows XP
boot record. Also, my hard disk cabling may have played a part.

It should be noted that both the memory and the hard disk came from
other much slower systems in which they worked fine.

Detail:

When I got back to work on my system the first thing I did was put
the _gray_ rather than the _black_ 40 pin connector on my hard disk. I
had read the night before in another manual that gray (closest to
motherboard) was for master and black was for slave. For years I have
always thought it was the reverse.

I then booted the install CD, and early in the file copy process I got
an "page fault" error. I had not received this error previously, just
"could not copy file" errors. But "page fault" meant memory problem I
figured.

I then put in an untried 256MB PC3200 DIMM. I restarted the install
from CD and all files copied without error, to may rapture. This was the
first time this had happened. Unfortunately, after Windows rebooted to
complete the installation, the BIOS reported "Error loading operating
system."

I then reinstalled. I blew away my 120 gig partition, created a 30 GB
one on it, let the install do full NTFS formatting, and again all
files copied over with no errors, to my redoubled rapture.
Unfortunately, the system again reported "Error loading operating
system" after windows rebooted to complete the install.

From the Recovery Console I thrashed about with fixmbr, fixboot, and
bootcfg hoping to find the right combination of these magic words.
After running fixmbr and booting back into Recovery Console, bootcfg
/rebuild said the disk had problems and to run chkdsk. Chkdsk then said
there were unrecoverable problems. Not impressed, I ran fixboot, after
which bootcfg /rebuild found my installation, and I Added it with
/fastdetect as an option. But on reboot, still got "Error loading
operating system."

I pulled the hard drive from another Windows XP machine, ran the
automatic repair from the XP install CD, and Windows XP installed
without incident.

After going through a couple cycles of Windows Update (my CD already had
SP2), I put the offending memory module back in the machine, hoping to
save a nickel. The system ran ok, until two Windows Update cycles
later, system would not boot, saying a file was missing or corrupt.

I put the good/compatible memory back in, and reinstalled without
incident. System has been surfing, emailing, and playing DVDs all day.

Thank all you guys for your replies. Anybody want this Chaintech I
bought to replace my now functional PG4E-MX?

Best,

Toney
 
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