Problems Installing Windows XP

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Guest

Hi,
I am having to reinstall my copy of windows XP on a new hard drive. This is the same copy as was used in the original build and then worked fine. However this time there are problems.

The formatting of the drive to NTFS works fine, no problems there. As soon as it starts setting up windows problems start to occur. A number of files fail to copy from the CD and once it has got into the installation itself the blue screen of death appears saying that a fatal error has occured and windows has stopped to prevent any damage occuring to the hard disk?

Now as I have installed off this CD before with no problems, this shouldn't be the cause. Other than swapping a 30Gb hard drive for a 80 Gb hard drive and installing a DVD re-writer no changes have been made to the computer.

Any suggestions on what could be causing the problem?

Thanks

Rachel
 
hi,

Please check your RAM chips. This might be one of the culprits.

Regards

M. Rajesh
www.winxpsolution.com

----- Rachel wrote: -----

Hi,
I am having to reinstall my copy of windows XP on a new hard drive. This is the same copy as was used in the original build and then worked fine. However this time there are problems.

The formatting of the drive to NTFS works fine, no problems there. As soon as it starts setting up windows problems start to occur. A number of files fail to copy from the CD and once it has got into the installation itself the blue screen of death appears saying that a fatal error has occured and windows has stopped to prevent any damage occuring to the hard disk?

Now as I have installed off this CD before with no problems, this shouldn't be the cause. Other than swapping a 30Gb hard drive for a 80 Gb hard drive and installing a DVD re-writer no changes have been made to the computer.

Any suggestions on what could be causing the problem?

Thanks

Rachel
 
[snip]
Any suggestions on what could be causing the problem?

Thanks

Rachel

Did you use an 80-conductor cable with your 80 GB drive or are you using the
old 40-conductor cable? Did you put both HD and DVD on the same cable and
does your motherboard support cable select or do you need to set the jumpers
on the back of the drive for master/slave?
 
Have no idea what you mean by an 80 or 40 conductor cable, but I suspect the latter.

The jumpers are all set correctly. At present the Main Hard drive is primary master and the DVD secondary master. There is also CD drive on primary slave and a second hard rive on secondary slave. Although since the trouble installing the DVD and second hard drive are currently disconnected, both from motherboard and the power.

The question about the ram - all is fine. (2Gb DDR)
 
This is the data ribbon going from your hard drive to the motherboard, as
mentioned an 80 wire ribbon is much more suited to XP as this provides a
much better data transfer.

It is possible to see wich you have as the 40 wire ribbon is heavily ribbed
and easy to physicaly count the number of wires compared to the finer 80
wire ribbon.

Sugest you look into getting the 80 wire round cable (aposed to the
traditional flat ribbon) they are now producing as they are a lot more user
friendly, you can find examples of them on EBay.

I had a simalar problem when I first got XP and changing to an 80 wire
ribbon cured it (I have now changed to the round cable type).

Mike P.
 
Re: 80 wire ribbon or round data cable, I should of mentioned that this is
commonly called the IDE connection.

Mike P.
 
Rachel said:
Have no idea what you mean by an 80 or 40 conductor cable, but I suspect the latter.

The jumpers are all set correctly. At present the Main Hard drive is
primary master and the DVD secondary master. There is also CD drive on
primary slave and a second hard rive on secondary slave. Although since the
trouble installing the DVD and second hard drive are currently disconnected,
both from motherboard and the power.
The question about the ram - all is fine. (2Gb DDR)

Ok well is your old hard drive an ATA/66 (DMA Mode 4), ATA/100 (DMA Mode 5),
or ATA/133 (DMA Mode 6) and is your new hard drive and DVD drive also ATA/66
or higher? If your old hard drive was one of these, you should have the
80-conductor cable, but you need to check and be for sure.

The 40-conductor cable is not capable of reliably handling the speeds of
DMA Mode 3, 4, 5, and 6. You just count the conductors on the cable, one has
40, the other has 80.
Here is a link showing picture of the cables and explaining them:
http://tinyurl.com/2k5y4
 
Ok, well I am definately using the old 40-conductor cables at the moment.

New hard drive is IBM Hard Drive Deskstar 7K250 80GB 2Mb ATA 7200rpm-OEM
DVD - not sure but as it is only about a year old.
Old hard drive is 20Gb IBM, will have to check the case to see what it is.

Following from Mikes suggestion to replace the cables with a 80-conductor round cable I was thinking of this one:
Coolermaster Int U100/U133 IDE Cable Round

Is this auitable and will it at least help to solve the problem?
 
Cable seems ok, bit pricy @£14 got mine for £4, but hey if it works go for
it.
There is not promise that this will cure the problem absolute but it will
definitely eliminate one of them.

Mike P.
 
Rachel said:
Ok, well I am definately using the old 40-conductor cables at the moment.

New hard drive is IBM Hard Drive Deskstar 7K250 80GB 2Mb ATA 7200rpm-OEM
DVD - not sure but as it is only about a year old.
Old hard drive is 20Gb IBM, will have to check the case to see what it is.

Following from Mikes suggestion to replace the cables with a 80-conductor
round cable I was thinking of this one:
Coolermaster Int U100/U133 IDE Cable Round

Is this auitable and will it at least help to solve the problem?

It will probably solve the problem, but you don't have to have a round one
unless you want to have less clutter. You need to put the DVD on a
80-conducter cable also... I bet it is a ATA/66. Anyway any IDE drive will
work on the 80-conducter cable and it is much more reliable than the
40-conductor on even a DMA 2 anda 3 drive.
 
I've ordered up two of the round80-conductor cables suitable up to ATA133, they arrive tomorrow, so I shall keep my fingers crossed. Thanks for the advice.
 
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