whodat

do as dai suggests and also recheck the orientation of the ribbon cable and make sure the hard drive is on the end of the chain.

another button battery might also be in order...but

there is a possibility you have a faulty bios rom chip in the asus which basically means you might have a defective mainboard, unless you want to replace the chip.

good luck

bty

all the cables are secure
i've checked that numerous times
i've taken everythiing in and out a good dozen or so times now

check which jumpers ?

and my hd is listed in the bios..

and yeah i kinda figured the bios chip in the asus was fried
but since that board was discontinued i wasn't sure i could order a new chip
so i went with buying the 2nd board..

another button battery ?
by that i'm guessing you mean the bios battery?

yeah.. i've got 3 of them here..
the one that came in the asus, one i replaced the one in the asus with a few months ago, and the one that came with the new mobo..

i've tried switching all 3 of them back and forth in there
none of them are letting me save anything
and those batteries aren't supposed to go dead for years, from what i hear..
unless i just got VERY unlucky..

ok I just noticed another new error too..

"Secondary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed"

says that right above the cmos checksum error

dai

the jumpers on the back of the drive
master on the end of the cable
slave in the middle
if they are correct try a new eide cable
if the bios has gone the computer will not start

bty

i cant find a screwdriver so i took the easy way out
i got the other harddrive i was using earlier
it's set to master
and on the end of the ide chain
it shows up in bios..

now what am i trying to accomplish by doing this?

i still get the cmos checksum error
and this one freezes at mup.sys as well

dai

what we are trying to accomplice is to go through step by step,to find where the problem is.
this other hard drive does it have a operating system on it
if yes was the operating system installed on this computer

bty

yes.. both harddrives have the same windows xp pro installation on them

i just hooked in a brand new IDE cable fresh out of the wrapper too

still getting all of the same errors


also found a screwdriver so i can go back to the other harddrive if that's messing with your steps and all..

I really appreciate the help too, sorry if i came off as rude..
Just getting really frustrated haha..

dai

was xp installed on the drive on this computer
found this
http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/w...rum/97354.html

bty

yes it was running xp pro

but step 1 on that..
run xp setup..

how ?
i can't boot from the cdrom
it keeps restoring itself to defaults everytime i start

unless there's some kind of floppy i can make
that'll boot the xp setup off of the cd ?

seems like there would be something like that
but if there is i'm not sure where to get it..

ah and the 2nd part..
saying he plugged the mouse in and unplugged it
am i sposed to try that?
i haven't even had a mouse plugged in while i've been trying this
right now it's just the keyboard, video card, cpu, one stick of ram, floppy, and one hard drive..

dai

disconnect the h/d and cd rom and see what happens

bty

ok i tried the 2nd part with the usb mouse...
yeah, that didn't do anything it's still frozen on mup.sys..

i was just thinking though
if i hook up my harddrive as a secondary slave under my cd rom..
would my harddrive still boot first?
or would it boot off of my xp cd?

just trying to think of a way i can get this xp cd to boot so we can maybe get somewhere lol

bty

it hasn't been connected for a while now..

-edit-

ok saw that you added h/d...


no h/d or cd rom connected.. just the floppy drive..

still get the cmos checksum error

if i go to boot

"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

cause there's no disk in the floppy, heh..

dai

have you a spare cd drive,you can d/l boot floppies to do the inicial install but then it switches to the cd to continue

bty

I just have this one cd rom at the moment

dai

you have no pci cards installed on the m/b?
try the h/d on the second ide channel on its own,just swap the plug over on the m/b

bty

No, there aren't any PCI cards installed..

Switched it over and it's still doing the same thing..

One other thing I just realized I haven't said yet..
When I go to boot into windows I get an error that says

Invalid BOOT.INI file
Booting from C:\Windows\


it started doing that a while back after i went into msconfig and removed a few things from the programs that were starting with windows because i had some spyware problems..

dai

you need to boot from the cd to fix it
when you set the bios to boot from cd first,you are saving the settings before exiting
can you borrow a cd drive from someone to see if yours has gone

bty

the cd rom works
when i boot into dos using a floppy
i can access the cd rom just fine
it's only a few months old too..

and yes im saving the settings before i exit
but when you exit bios it restarts the computer
and everytime i restart
it gives me the "CMOS checksum error - Defaults Loaded"

and loads all the default bios settings back to normal

so, yeah.. i kinda figured i could fix it if i could get it to boot from the cd
but i have no idea how to do that when i cant set the bios to boot from cd
and i cant boot it from dos because the xp setup can't run in dos mode..

dai

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...7-4FED408EA73F

bty

alright..

got all 6 disks out and all
went through the setup twice now

it gets to the windows setup and loads all the drivers..
on the 6th disk..
it just says Please wait...

i've been waiting a good 30 minutes or so and nothing's happening o_O

xp cd is in the drive
its plugged in and all..
idk.. o_O

dai

i suspect the cd drive,the only way to tell is if you can put another one in or get someone to put it on their computer to test it