error loading operating system

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pleb

I post back along about probs with Vista/XP and the PC hanging ... so I
thought I would start from scratch.

I managed to get the pc up and running by swapping the DVD rom over to the
other IDE channel ... and it seemed to let the PC boot with all three drives
attached. Nice :D

Problem is ... at the mo .. when I format my SATA drive, even a complete
format (as opposed to the quick option), and XP goes through the "Copying
files to your computer" bit .... the pc reboots ... but then hangs just
after the bios screen saying ..

"Error loading operating system" Ive not come accross this before, even
after formatting and going through the install process ... it still wont
boot off the HDH?!?!?!?

Im loosing patience with the hard ware I have as I assume now that one of
the parts, i.e. mobo hdd etc, is probably broken

Any last thoughts before I dig into my savings??

Simon
 
I post back along about probs with Vista/XP and the PC hanging ... so I
thought I would start from scratch.

I managed to get the pc up and running by swapping the DVD rom over to the
other IDE channel ... and it seemed to let the PC boot with all three drives
attached. Nice :D

Problem is ... at the mo .. when I format my SATA drive, even a complete
format (as opposed to the quick option), and XP goes through the "Copying
files to your computer" bit .... the pc reboots ... but then hangs just
after the bios screen saying ..

"Error loading operating system" Ive not come accross this before, even
after formatting and going through the install process ... it still wont
boot off the HDH?!?!?!?

Im loosing patience with the hard ware I have as I assume now that one of
the parts, i.e. mobo hdd etc, is probably broken

Any last thoughts before I dig into my savings??

Simon
Click to expand...

Have you checked all of your jumpers to make sure they are in the right
spot? Is your BIOS set to boot of of external media before the hard
drive? do you have a thumb dirve plugged in for some reason?

AR
 
I just experienced this EXACT problem!
XP hung at install, just after having loaded the files and drivers that
it needs during the installation.
(It hung at the message 'Starting Up Windows' which is a part of the
installation process, about 10% into the installation.)

Since I had just got a new hard drive, I was convinced that I had done
something wrong with the setup of the drive.
(I ran fdisk, formatted the drive, changed all the Bios settings again
and again.....Arrrgh! :-(
In fact, there was even a message at bootup saying 'invalid drive'.

Eventually I decided I had tried everything and decided to get another
drive. I went to a shope called Barkman's Computers in Kingston on
Thames. I got chatting to the owner and he suggested that I take off
the hardware components one by one and keep trying.
He said 'It is NOT your drive, there can't be anything wrong with it, so
I won't sell you another drive...!'
(Cool guy - he knew what he was talking about!) He said 'It's got to be
the RAM or the PSU.

I didn't see any logic in that at all, but I followed his advice and...
it was THE RAM !!

It turns out that Bios, disk utilities etc don't care if you have put in
a stick of RAM a bit wrong. They just ignore that stick.
But Windows hangs in the middle of the installation.....

Windows is always giving messages about things - here is a time when it
would really have been really helpful.
Instead it first gave a misleading message, and then nothing at all.

I would never have guessed that it was the RAM. I can only repeat the
advice that I got. Try to strip out as much hardware as you can and
start the installations from a 'bare'board.
 
I have found that when using newer motherboards with sata , all drives
except the drive your going to install the OS on must be disconnected. Once
this is done, turn on computer, go to bios and change your boot to CD-rom,(I
disable all alternate boot devices except the C drive/cdrom drive) save and
reboot and let XP run up. I strongly suggest that you have raid driver disks
ready to use and when asked if you want to install raid drivers, press F6
when it pops up. On my gigabyte board, if raid drivers are not installed,
there are problems. if you don't install raid drivers, don't install your
IDE driver when installing your motherboard drivers. For a true fresh
install, you must delete the partition on the disk and create it again.
Otherwise, spyware will likely remain on your hard drive. Format it using
NTFS( not the quicky either or bad sectors will not be marked, probably
causing problems. Xp will then load( leave raid disk in floppy as XP needs
them yet). Once XP is loaded, I shut down my computer, plug in my "storage"
drive and restart. I install the latest version of ZoneAlarms
firewall(Windows firewall is not bullet proof) and download all updates.
reboot as necessary and then install motherboard drivers, Direct X 9c(latest
version) followed by vidcard drivers and all other pci type hard ware
drivers. I was told by gigabyte that when installing the OS, all pci
hardware should be removed(except vidcard) as it interferes with Os install.
Once I install vidcard drivers, I install my sound card/tunercard seperately
(installing the drivers also separately with each bootup).
I use my storage drive to hold all latest updates as I have found that some
drivers that come on the disk are not "up to par". The only one I trust is
Gigabytes lan driver.

Also make sure you have your bios flashed to latest version and the latest
motherboard drivers. I had to go to nvidias site to get my drivers as
gigabyte(and maybe Asus) don't have the latest ones. Both Asus and gigabyte
have useful "techs" that will tell you where to find the latest drivers and
which raid drivers to install.
--
Love and Teach, Not Yell and Beat
Stop Violence and Child Abuse.
No such thing as Bad Kids. Only Bad Parents.
Friends don't turn friends on to drugs.
The path often thought about and sometimes chosen by abused children as
adults is Suicide. Be a real friend.

A64 3500+, Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939,AIW 9800 128mb
MSI 550 Pro, X-Fi, Pioneer 110D, 111D
Antec 550 watt,Thermaltake Lanfire,2 Gb Dual Channel OCZ
2XSATA 320gb Raid Edition, PATA 120Gb
XPMCE2005, 19in Viewsonic,BenchMark 2001 SE- 19074
Games I'm Playing- Falcon 4, SP:WAW
 
VanShania said:
I have found that when using newer motherboards with sata , all drives
except the drive your going to install the OS on must be disconnected. Once
this is done, turn on computer, go to bios and change your boot to
CD-rom,(I disable all alternate boot devices except the C drive/cdrom
drive) save and reboot and let XP run up. I strongly suggest that you have
raid driver disks ready to use and when asked if you want to install raid
drivers, press F6 when it pops up. On my gigabyte board, if raid drivers
are not installed, there are problems. if you don't install raid drivers,
don't install your IDE driver when installing your motherboard drivers. For
a true fresh install, you must delete the partition on the disk and create
it again. Otherwise, spyware will likely remain on your hard drive. Format
it using NTFS( not the quicky either or bad sectors will not be marked,
probably causing problems. Xp will then load( leave raid disk in floppy as
XP needs them yet). Once XP is loaded, I shut down my computer, plug in my
"storage" drive and restart. I install the latest version of ZoneAlarms
firewall(Windows firewall is not bullet proof) and download all updates.
reboot as necessary and then install motherboard drivers, Direct X
9c(latest version) followed by vidcard drivers and all other pci type hard
ware drivers. I was told by gigabyte that when installing the OS, all pci
hardware should be removed(except vidcard) as it interferes with Os
install. Once I install vidcard drivers, I install my sound card/tunercard
seperately (installing the drivers also separately with each bootup).
I use my storage drive to hold all latest updates as I have found that
some drivers that come on the disk are not "up to par". The only one I
trust is Gigabytes lan driver.

Also make sure you have your bios flashed to latest version and the latest
motherboard drivers. I had to go to nvidias site to get my drivers as
gigabyte(and maybe Asus) don't have the latest ones. Both Asus and
gigabyte have useful "techs" that will tell you where to find the latest
drivers and which raid drivers to install.
Click to expand...

I got so frustrated with it in the end .. i just swapped the drive out for a
spare (which was also a SATA drive) and it all worked a treat.

The system was alll working fine - two hdd's, dual booting (os on each
drive) then I installed the RC2 of vista and things slowly went down hill.

One other thing - I have installed xp loads of times on the same hardware,
always on sata drives, but have never pressed F6 at the sata drive option -
the machine has always installed and booted fine. In light of this - should
I still have hit F6 on install or are my drives just ... well working
without??

Thanks

Simon
 
Only to load your raid drivers. I found that loading my raid drivers allowed
me to install my IDE driver(nvidia) which allowed my computer to work with
out problems. I noticed a few posts from people sometime before, that had
problems with nvidia's IDE driver. It works well with raid drivers
installed.

--
Love and Teach, Not Yell and Beat
Stop Violence and Child Abuse.
No such thing as Bad Kids. Only Bad Parents.
Friends don't turn friends on to drugs.
The path often thought about and sometimes chosen by abused children as
adults is Suicide. Be a real friend.

A64 3500+, Gigabyte GA-K8NSC-939,AIW 9800 128mb
MSI 550 Pro, X-Fi, Pioneer 110D, 111D
Antec 550 watt,Thermaltake Lanfire,2 Gb Dual Channel OCZ
2XSATA 320gb Raid Edition, PATA 120Gb
XP MCE2005, 19in Viewsonic,BenchMark 2001 SE- 19074
Games I'm Playing- Falcon 4, winSPWW2, winSPMBT
 
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