[stagger]

I'm running WinXP Home on an A7V333 mobo, g4 ti4200, athlon 2200+ xp, 80 gig maxtor hard drive. If there's any other relevant information that could help, let me know.

I have a big problem with my comp. There are a few things that could've possibly caused it. Either it's a device driver (if it is it's probably the latest nvidia DET), or it's ****ed up registry editing. I was editing the registry before all this happened, and I firs noticed the bootup problem when I restarted immediately after editing the registry. Anyway, it started out with frequent errors and a bootup problem. In order to load windows, I had to boot up, then it wouldn't load windows, so I had to press restart and leave "start normally" highlighted for 30 seconds in order to load windows properly. If I actually pressd enter to select it, it wouldnt load right.

By the way, I had this computer for about a month with nvidia drivers that came with the card. The latst DET is what I downloaded. There were a few minor errors (whatever must close, send error report, etc.) and apparently they were caused by a device driver, and the only new driver I had gotten was the new DET a few days before. That driver is defenitely the cause of some problems.

So, I formatted and reinstalled XP. Reinstalled all drivers including the nvidia DET. Problems. The same bootup problem, frequent errors, and occasionally a blue screen saying "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA" and then I would have to restart. There have been various other errors, such as errors with win32k.sys, nv4_disp.dll.

So anyway, I tried repairing the xp installation but it wouldn't work. I tried formatting the drive again, but this time XP wouldn't install. It would give me the "page fault" thing in the middle of installation. Also, there was one "driver irql not less or equal"

I tried doing a disk check in DOS, and it said there were one or more errors and I assume they were repaired because they didn't show up on another disk check.

At one point it actually finished installing, but at the very end it said there was an error loading registry files and "\windows\system32\config\system" and there was "systemroot\system32\config\software"

If I tried to install XP anymore, it would give me a blue screen with an error listing like the ones above, or page_fault etc. and it would say "beginning dump of physical memory" and "dumping physical memory to disk" with a number indicating dumping progress, I guess.

Now I'm on my old computer wondering what the hell is wrong. My other computer is new, and I will be in a ****load of trouble if it's broken or whatever. Any suggestions at all, please?

It is hard drive corruption? It couldn't be the registry because I formatted, right? Maybe a problem with the driver or registry before I formatted messed up the hard drive in some way that formatting can't fix? Problem with the winxp install disc, even?

Someone suggested that it could be an IRQ conflict between the video card and the card in the slot under it. Could that cause all of this?

 

[SPEEDO]

Welcome to the forums stagger...........

Go here and download Maxblast 1.27S.

Follow the instructions on the page on how to make a floppy.

What you need to do is boot to the floppy and get to powermax and wipe the drive clean.

What is happening is when your trying to reload XP is that the format doesn't really clean the hard drive good and it's reading some of the old information..............:winkgrin:

 

[SPEEDO]

Whoops forgot this. This is where you need to wind up on the floppy.........

 

[stagger]

That doesn't support XP, though. In order to run the format thing I would need a startup floppy for ME or whatever, and I don't have that. I can't even get to the point where it would show the menu you posted a pic of. I tried maxblast plus 2 but that didn't work. I made the disk but it gives a critical error if I try to boot with it. Any other suggestions? Any other ways to wipe the drive? Right now I'm on my old ****ty comp. The other one can't do ANYTHING. It won't install XP and I can't do anything in DOS but format which apparently doesn't help.

 

[b_bins]

I have the Huge Problem too, to the T

Dude, I have the same problem, I have replaced my hard drive and video card. Still get the same problems. I am pretty sure it was my ATI video card and I am trying to resolve issues with the old ATI card (have a Xtasy now). Try this as a quick fix, lower your clock frequency in BIOS to 100 MHz. I don't know why it works, but it does. This fix should get your computer up and stable, but it will be slower. I am still working on this problem so if I find out anything, I'll post it. You do the same.

BTW: The fix about booting from the floppy might help you but I don't think so. See, I have the same problems and I loaded XP on a brand new drive. It is something with BIOS and some drivers, not old code on your drive.

 

[gotissues68]

I'd be curious to find out the hard drive sizes you guys are using and what file system you are using when you're installing XP.

I had a similar issue awhile back and finally found out it was a flaw in XP and 2K with the file system and large IDE hard drives (something to do with the way it handles cache'd paging requests on the hard drive)

There was a post above about wiping the box clean, and that would also be my suggestion. Boot with a 98 or Me floppy and then go in with FDISK and clean out the partitions completely and do a full format.. it sucks.. but its what I had to do. Once I did that.. it worked like a charm using the FAT32 FS versus NTFS.

I hope this might be of some help to you guys. I lost alot of data and time (3 months to be exact) trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, when it was the file system the whole time.

Drew

 

[b_bins]

Hey, thanks for the advice. A couple things though, I tryed 3 drives: A 6.4G, 40G and 80G. I have formatted the drive each time. I get errors that tell me to advise my techical support that I need the DLLs loaded. These are video files I am pretty sure because the errors that XP reports to Microsoft had one of these files listed. I know that the 100 MHz clock versus the 133 MHz clock works. Weird fix but who knows. I am not going to reformat again though, I dont have the time and I know that there is some error with XP and our configurations that are causing this.
Another thing, I would get the blue screens, they would tell me to restart, I did. Then I get through the initial boot screen and then It tells me to select "r" to repair. Well, when I go to boot on floppy, the system starts to check my configuration. Then, it tells me I have a file that is missing( a start up file I guess). Then I lower my clock frequency and It boots up right through to XP desktop.

 

[gotissues68]

That is totally crazy I feel for ya bins

 

[SPEEDO]

Stagger

I made the disk but it gives a critical error if I try to boot with it

Is it set to boot from floppy first in the bios?

The only thing you want to do with this disk is write zeros to the drive, Not fdisk or format...........

Did you download Maxblast version 1.27s? I have been using this for a couple of years now without a problem.

It's right about in the middle of the page on the link I posted above. Marked Download Maxblast Plus

Of course you will need a new floppy to install Maxblast onto.

After that you can change the boot sequence to boot from CD-Rom first to install the XP. With an 80 gig hard drive you will need to choose the NTFS as your file system when you load XP.

 

[stagger]

Yes, it boots from floppy first. It didn't completely format the drive, though. I have to go now, be back later to try again, but the program didn't cover all 80 gigabytes. Partition only covered about 2.

Also, how do I go into fdisk and format? I've been formatting by booting from the XP install disc and telling it to format and then install windows, and once I formatted in DOS.