atmywitsend

First of all - hello
I'm having a terrible time with a new system.
This is the spec -

2 x 1gb corsiar xms2-6400
hitachi deskstar 320gb sata hard drive
asus p5n-e sli motherboard
e6600 quad core 2.4ghz processor
Arctic 500 watt power supply

I have installed windows xp a number of times but I am really struggling with this.
I managed to install windows to an old 20gb ide drive instead of the sata one with no

problems which makes me think its to do with sata and drivers maybe.....

When I install xp I get to "setup is starting windows" and I see a flash of the next screen

- I believe it's where you set up the keyboard? But I only see that for a split second and

it goes back to the start of the installation procedure, without a restart. It goes around

in loops like this continuously (though it does restart after copying files to the hard

drive and the files ARE there when I boot to the ide drive I see em on the sata drive)

I have read as many forums as I could but can't see a problem identical to mine.

I have downloaded sata drivers from the asus site and tried to install them by pressing f6

at the appropriate time during installation but there are 5? ish drivers to choose from I

assume its the JMB360 drivers because all the others mention Raid (from the manual on the

installation disc)
But that driver doesnt seem to work. I have tried making a floppy driver disc with the

utility on the motherboard disc but they don't seem to work either. To be fair I'm not

certain which drivers I should actually be installing)

I have tried letting the installation run without pressing anything.

I have tried ghosting the image from the ide drive to the sata but it says that the

partition is "bad"?? I tried formatting it from windows with no luck. It seems to format

with no probs during install.

I tried partition magic as I read a post about windows struggling with drives over 137mb -

but because it says "bad" partition it wont touch it.

The sata drive is about 3 months old and I used it in my old system with no probs until the

gfx card died (i used an old card for a while after the old one died with no probs) - of

course I've had to upgrade motherboard processor and ram along with a new gfx card..

The old motherboard was sata I and I used the hitachi boot disc to swap from sata II to sata

I about three months ago (on a friends pc) and I changed from sata I to sata II yesterday with this new system, and it all

seemed to go swimmingly, I've tried it a few times in case that was my problem.

I managed to get a hold of a windows boot cd and when I tried to install from dos it told me "No valid system partitions were found. Setup is unable to continue"

I am desperate to get the system up and running any help would be really really appreciated.

atmywitsend

It seems that the jmicron (JMB360) sata drivers are for the esata socket on the back of the pc, nvidia controls the 4 internal sata therefore I made an nvidia driver floppy disc (using the motherboard cd) and installed the drivers on that now when I press f6 I only get 2 options for drivers to install -

NVIDIA RAID CLASS DRIVER (required)
NVIDIA nForce Storage Controller (required)

So with them both saying "required" I installed both and .... same thing happened. grrr

atmywitsend

PROBLEM SOLVED
After trying everything I know or have read in the last day and a half I finally sorted it.
I had one 320(ish)gb partition on c drive
I decided to press d and delete it at the part where windows asks where you would like to install it.
Then I have unpartitioned space.
It then asks what size I want to make a new partition to install windows to I entered 100,000 mb (100gb) and windows went ahead and installed!!

ebackhus

Glad you got this sorted! If you don't mind I'm going to mark this thread as [Solved].