J
John Wilson
The following system experienced what seems to be an unretrievable hard
drive failure:
ASUS A7V motherboard (including Promise Ultra 100 disk controller)
2x 40GB IBM hard drives
Other hardware that's probably irrelevant to the problem.
A little history: It's a dual-boot system; drive 0 had Windows 2000
Professional, and drive 1 had Red Hat Linux 8.0. The Windows drive
started experiencing an increasing number of errors and making funny
noises, and finally got to the point where it sometimes wouldn't boot.
Virus protection is up to date and our LAN is behind a hardware
firewall, so I assumed that it was in the process of a hardware failure.
I removed a new 80GB Western Digital drive I had bought to replace the
boot disk in our other computer after Win2k SP4 had wrecked the system.
(After I formatted and successfully installed Win2k on the new disk, I
ran into some configuration hassles, tried again and succeeded with the
"emergency repair process" on the original hard disk, and declared the
new disk to be an extra data disk. So when the hard disk began to fail
in the other machine, I yanked the 80GB drive and installed it as the
boot drive in the machine with the hardware failure.)
So now the configuration is:
ASUS A7V motherboard as above
1x 80GB Western Digital hard drive (Formatted in two 40GB FAT32
partitions for linux compatibility)
1x 40GB IBM hard drive (Formatted for linux)
etc.
I used Partition Magic to remove everything from the C: partition on the
new drive, and have been trying to set up Windows 2000 Professional
w/SP2 from the CD. The motherboard has the latest BIOS, and I have the
newest version of the Promise disk controller driver (Hit F6 etc.)
Installing Win2k goes verrrrrry slowly, and when it gets to the point of
trying to set up the default configuration, I get the following:
"Setup cannot set the required Windows 2000 configuration information.
This indicates an internal Setup error.
Contact your system administrator."
At this point the only option is hit F3 to reboot, leaving setup
unaccomplished and no Windows system.
The hard disk seems ok; I can access both partitions from Linux with no
problem. I have not put the Linux boot loader on the disk, as Linux
boots just fine from a floppy disk. I have two Windows 2000 CDs, one
with no Service Packs, and have tried both, with the same result.
As I mentioned above, I was running Windows 2000 on this machine with
the same BIOS, just a different C: disk, until the 40GB IBM disk failed,
and I had no problem setting up Windows 2000 in the same partition on
the 80GB Western Digital disk, but in a different machine. If I
reconnect the 40GB IBM drive, Windows 2000 still runs, though as I said,
the drive shows signs of failing. I've tried the following:
Changed BIOS setting "PNP OS" to "No"; no change
Changed BIOS setting for disk recognition; no combination caused
anything different
Disconnected the Linux drive; no change
Starting Win2k setup, hit F5 and specified "Standard PC"; no change
Each of these tests takes about 3 hours because of the snail's pace at
which the installation runs.
Any ideas beyond declaring this to be a Linux-only machine?
Tnx,
JohnW
drive failure:
ASUS A7V motherboard (including Promise Ultra 100 disk controller)
2x 40GB IBM hard drives
Other hardware that's probably irrelevant to the problem.
A little history: It's a dual-boot system; drive 0 had Windows 2000
Professional, and drive 1 had Red Hat Linux 8.0. The Windows drive
started experiencing an increasing number of errors and making funny
noises, and finally got to the point where it sometimes wouldn't boot.
Virus protection is up to date and our LAN is behind a hardware
firewall, so I assumed that it was in the process of a hardware failure.
I removed a new 80GB Western Digital drive I had bought to replace the
boot disk in our other computer after Win2k SP4 had wrecked the system.
(After I formatted and successfully installed Win2k on the new disk, I
ran into some configuration hassles, tried again and succeeded with the
"emergency repair process" on the original hard disk, and declared the
new disk to be an extra data disk. So when the hard disk began to fail
in the other machine, I yanked the 80GB drive and installed it as the
boot drive in the machine with the hardware failure.)
So now the configuration is:
ASUS A7V motherboard as above
1x 80GB Western Digital hard drive (Formatted in two 40GB FAT32
partitions for linux compatibility)
1x 40GB IBM hard drive (Formatted for linux)
etc.
I used Partition Magic to remove everything from the C: partition on the
new drive, and have been trying to set up Windows 2000 Professional
w/SP2 from the CD. The motherboard has the latest BIOS, and I have the
newest version of the Promise disk controller driver (Hit F6 etc.)
Installing Win2k goes verrrrrry slowly, and when it gets to the point of
trying to set up the default configuration, I get the following:
"Setup cannot set the required Windows 2000 configuration information.
This indicates an internal Setup error.
Contact your system administrator."
At this point the only option is hit F3 to reboot, leaving setup
unaccomplished and no Windows system.
The hard disk seems ok; I can access both partitions from Linux with no
problem. I have not put the Linux boot loader on the disk, as Linux
boots just fine from a floppy disk. I have two Windows 2000 CDs, one
with no Service Packs, and have tried both, with the same result.
As I mentioned above, I was running Windows 2000 on this machine with
the same BIOS, just a different C: disk, until the 40GB IBM disk failed,
and I had no problem setting up Windows 2000 in the same partition on
the 80GB Western Digital disk, but in a different machine. If I
reconnect the 40GB IBM drive, Windows 2000 still runs, though as I said,
the drive shows signs of failing. I've tried the following:
Changed BIOS setting "PNP OS" to "No"; no change
Changed BIOS setting for disk recognition; no combination caused
anything different
Disconnected the Linux drive; no change
Starting Win2k setup, hit F5 and specified "Standard PC"; no change
Each of these tests takes about 3 hours because of the snail's pace at
which the installation runs.
Any ideas beyond declaring this to be a Linux-only machine?
Tnx,
JohnW