Hello kids, I've got a nice little brain-teaser for you all 
(it's kind of long, so just a heads-up)
First, system specs:
motherboard: ECS P4M800PRO-M (yes, I know, it's ecs. hopefully we will be
fixing that in the next few days)
Ram: 1gb stick of DDR2 533mhz 4200 Patriot
Video Card: (VisionTek) ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256mb
CD Drive: Lite-On LTN486 48x Max
Hard Drives: Maxtor 41.1GB (not sata)
Quantom Fireball 10GB (not sata)
Processor: Intel dual-core 3.4ghz
PSU: Antec SmartPower 2.0 400 Watt
If you need further info, just ask. Right, now that that's overwith, on to the problem. We're upgrading my gf's system (was a generic Dell comp), the only thing from the old one is the cd drive. Originally we had a generic Powork 600 watt psu installed (I will get to this later). We turn the comp on, and we encounter the first problem; the Fireball isn't detected, and the Maxtor (which has the os on it) is apparently about to crap out (something about the SMART thingy going bad, and to backup and replace). It wouldn't let us get past that, so we restarted; this time the Maxtor didn't even show up. After a few more restarts, we unplugged the Fireball, thinking there might not be enough power. The Maxtor popped up half the time after that.
This was about the time we decided to switch out the Powork with the Antec, and it seemed to work. The Maxtor is detected every time, but the Fireball still isn't. I've disconnected that drive, to save some guesswork and headaches. So now I have the setup at the top of the page, minus the Fireball. We put an XP Pro install disc into the cd rom, and it does it's thing. After setup and loading, it tries to examine "(some large number) kb At (there were three adresses, each starting with 0, it only happened twice, and I didn't think to write it down)"; at this point, the system locked up. we waited 10 minutes for it to respond, and got nothing. so we restarted, this time, the "examining" thing went through. After this, we selected an unpartitioned space (just wanted to format the system and get it done with, it was like 2am). As it starts doing this, we get a blue screen error "Plug and play detected an error most likely caused by a faulty driver." this is the Tech info:
***Stop: 0x000000ca (0x00000001,0x85edc590,0x85ee49e0,0x00000000)
After that, every time we try to setup XP, after it loads and "Setup is starting Windows", we get the blue screen. Whenever the hard drive boots, we get "Invalid Partition Table", which I'm assuming means it's not finding an os. I stuck the Stop Error into Microsofts tech support, and they said it had to do with two components having the same ID, or IRQ, or something. Considering the only things hooked up are the cdr and hard drive, I don't see how that's possible, but then I've been known to overlook things. I've tried almost every combination I can think of, in light of the possible problems. The video card is no longer in, I'm using the onboard video. I have a dvd burner that we tried, but that didn't work. I haven't tried different RAM slots, but I doubt that's whats causing the problem. Since I have a DOS boot disk, we're gonna try to install DOS and re-format the Maxtor. If there's anything I've missed, as I said before, please tell me and I'll post the info...if I know how. Right, thanks in advance
(it's kind of long, so just a heads-up)First, system specs:
motherboard: ECS P4M800PRO-M (yes, I know, it's ecs. hopefully we will be
fixing that in the next few days)
Ram: 1gb stick of DDR2 533mhz 4200 Patriot
Video Card: (VisionTek) ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256mb
CD Drive: Lite-On LTN486 48x Max
Hard Drives: Maxtor 41.1GB (not sata)
Quantom Fireball 10GB (not sata)
Processor: Intel dual-core 3.4ghz
PSU: Antec SmartPower 2.0 400 Watt
If you need further info, just ask. Right, now that that's overwith, on to the problem. We're upgrading my gf's system (was a generic Dell comp), the only thing from the old one is the cd drive. Originally we had a generic Powork 600 watt psu installed (I will get to this later). We turn the comp on, and we encounter the first problem; the Fireball isn't detected, and the Maxtor (which has the os on it) is apparently about to crap out (something about the SMART thingy going bad, and to backup and replace). It wouldn't let us get past that, so we restarted; this time the Maxtor didn't even show up. After a few more restarts, we unplugged the Fireball, thinking there might not be enough power. The Maxtor popped up half the time after that.
This was about the time we decided to switch out the Powork with the Antec, and it seemed to work. The Maxtor is detected every time, but the Fireball still isn't. I've disconnected that drive, to save some guesswork and headaches. So now I have the setup at the top of the page, minus the Fireball. We put an XP Pro install disc into the cd rom, and it does it's thing. After setup and loading, it tries to examine "(some large number) kb At (there were three adresses, each starting with 0, it only happened twice, and I didn't think to write it down)"; at this point, the system locked up. we waited 10 minutes for it to respond, and got nothing. so we restarted, this time, the "examining" thing went through. After this, we selected an unpartitioned space (just wanted to format the system and get it done with, it was like 2am). As it starts doing this, we get a blue screen error "Plug and play detected an error most likely caused by a faulty driver." this is the Tech info:
***Stop: 0x000000ca (0x00000001,0x85edc590,0x85ee49e0,0x00000000)
After that, every time we try to setup XP, after it loads and "Setup is starting Windows", we get the blue screen. Whenever the hard drive boots, we get "Invalid Partition Table", which I'm assuming means it's not finding an os. I stuck the Stop Error into Microsofts tech support, and they said it had to do with two components having the same ID, or IRQ, or something. Considering the only things hooked up are the cdr and hard drive, I don't see how that's possible, but then I've been known to overlook things. I've tried almost every combination I can think of, in light of the possible problems. The video card is no longer in, I'm using the onboard video. I have a dvd burner that we tried, but that didn't work. I haven't tried different RAM slots, but I doubt that's whats causing the problem. Since I have a DOS boot disk, we're gonna try to install DOS and re-format the Maxtor. If there's anything I've missed, as I said before, please tell me and I'll post the info...if I know how. Right, thanks in advance
