My Brand New DAW... :(

[Sir Dingo]

Just spent a load of cash on what is supposed to be a great new DAW for my studio....but I'm having some issues....

The system:

AMD Athlon xp 3200+
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe M/board
1.5 Gig of DDR RAM
80 Gig HD for OS/Software
160 Gig HD for Audio

The problem:

I'm trying to install Windows XP Pro and the set-up/installation takes over 4 HOURS (!!!) even when XP says installation will be completed in approx 39 mins. Talk about SLOOOOW.

THEN, when XP is supposedly installed and reboots, I get nothing but a black screen and the PC freezes.

Does anyone know whats happening - Can anyone help me?

Thanks...

[SpaceChild]

You definitely have some defective hardware. Could be RAM (my prime suspect), mobo or the hdds. Finding it out might be tricky if you don't have another box to test with, but if I was you, I would take it back to where I bought it and have them check it. Modern hardware failure rates as relatively small, but every now and again you get stuff that is damaged.

Good luck with it, I hope you get it sorted asap.


Spacey

[jdunn]

Yeah, or maybe your motherboard BIOS can't handle Windows XP service pack 2 or something like that. Make sure you have the most recent BIOS, though I don't really know what I'm talking about. Just guessing. Good luck.

[cdog]

Thats horrible man, I would try to return your motherboard first if removing peripherals doesnt work.

Maybe a problem with the power supply?

Check out the BIOS and make sure everything looks normal, chip temps, etc.

[dingo]

At what point do you get the black screen/halt? Does it post (get the post screen with all of the hw info, irq's etc.)? You installing XP off of the oem cd? If so, have you successfully installed off of that cd before on another system?

If you want to get the ram possibility out of the way while you're searching for answers, you might try memtest86+ http://www.memtest.org/ or the original memtest86 http://www.memtest86.com/
I haven't used memtest86+, but the original's been very useful to me.

[Sir Dingo]

The black screen comes AFTER the installation of XP. When the (4+ hours) installation is finished the PC reboots. It goes through the start up checks, then instead of getting the normal XP is loading logo, I get nothiing but black... :(

[Crandall1]

This smells like a hard drive problem to me.

Since you're installing XP, can we assume you've built this system yourself? That being the case, there are a few things you can try to test your stuff _before_ you start yanking components.

This might get deep, though...

There are many different distros of Linux that are available as "live CDs." That is, the distro runs off the CD, instead of getting shunted to an HD. You could download one of these and boot it, to nose around and see what's working.

That aside, I think your first order of business is to just yank the drive you're installing on, and try to install on the other (audio) drive. If that works, then you know the first drive was ass-tastic, and you can return it. WinXP should install in about half an hour on that system, end to end.

Finally, I should mention that I used Asus motherboards for a long time, until I got exactly the one you have. I had so many problems with it (albeit nothing like you're having) that I switched to Gigabyte, and have never looked back. I'm done with Asus and their useless websites, nonexistent support, shitty manuals, and unreliable products.

All of that is, of course, my opinion. YMMV.

Chris Randall

[deft_bonz]

Originally posted by Sir Dingo
The black screen comes AFTER the installation of XP. When the (4+ hours) installation is finished the PC reboots. It goes through the start up checks, then instead of getting the normal XP is loading logo, I get nothiing but black... :(

sounds very like a hardware defect. i had once problems with a cd-rom. i think it was because it was a very cheap noname product. but even with brands you may get faulty firmwares etc. try to eliminate these.

a good idea would be to get a 100% working xp-cd. just to be sure that this is NOT the source of all yours problems.

good luck, deft:::

[j.m]

Like dingo said: Do you install from an OEM-CD?


When I bought my PC in first place, I've always installed XP as FAT32.
Then I've read on a few sites that NTFS might be better,
so now I'm always installing NTFS on my PC.


One Day I took the PC of my sister with me,
because she had some problems with a few programs and couldn't get it to work.

After various attempts to repair those programs, I've decided to reinstall XP

Her PC had an OEM-Version with it.

I've tried to reinstall 4 times and just couldn't make it happen.
I can't recall if it was the same exact symptoms, but they where at least similar.

Everytime I tried to reinstall XP, I had always gone the NTFS route.
Just couldn't make it work.

After the fourth attempt, I've tried it with FAT32 and all of a sudden it worked.
I don't know why exactly - but assumed that it has something to do with the OEM-Version she has.


Might be worth a try - if you're experiencing similar problems.

good luck
j.m

[alfonso]

Black screens can be also consequence of badly sitting pci or agp cards...the very first check should be on the proper hardware montage....try to reposition the graphics and any other card..

I hope you solve it fast

[GigIdea]

A couple of thoughts here:

(1) I have installed XP several times on various computers, from Intel PIII based to AMD dual Opteron systems. I have never had an installation go off in half an hour. Or an hour. It usually takes two hours or longer to do it right.

(2) You say you paid "loads of cash" for the system, so I'm guessing it was delivered all put together. If it was, I'm guessing the builder knew what he was doing. I did not have time to do this, but you can always go to the ASUS website and make sure the motherboard you received is compatible with the Athlon XP 3200 CPU. It probably is, but its worth checking.

(3) During the installation process, what hard drive did you select as your system drive? In other words, what hard drive did you install Windows XP on? Let's say its drive C. In order for this to work, drive C also needs to be: (a) selected as a boot drive, preferably the primary boot drive; and (b) in order to be selected as a boot drive it needs to have been installed as a master and not a slave drive.

What determines master/slave status is the connection wiring between the hard drives and the motherboard. Its very simple. You can figure it out in a few minutes from Western Digital's or Seagate's website. They make hard drives.

What determines which drive is the primary boot drive? For that you go into BIOS. During the preliminary startup chatter when your computer comes on and scrolls through all the gibberish, you hit the delete button a couple of times. After a while it will settle down and you'll be in BIOS land. You can't use your mouse. Use your cursor and the Enter key, etc. It has a menu and you'll find a place to select your boot drive. Find the one you want and plug her in. Save the way they tell you to save, and exit.

Hopefully that will do it.

Why do I think this might be what's going on?

I think if you had a defective piece of hardware you would get a blue screen sometime during bootup along with an error message. What may be happening is that your computer is going through its usual checks, going to whatever drives are currently selected as bootable in BIOS at the present time, and maybe not finding Windows XP--because XP is installed on a drive thatis not in the boot list.

If that doesn't work I wouldn't waste too much more time on it. Bring it to someone who knows what they're doing. There's no sense dfegad any more of your valuable time away. I've been there, and I know what you're going through!

Best of luck, you'll get there...

Mike

[natpub]

I just went through a similar problem and had to do pretty much every single thing suggested here. I even bought another Mobo. I removed and added single componants, and fortunately had doubles and triples of everything (I had stacks of HDD's sitting around, stacks of various video cards, sticks of RAM, etc---I have lots of computers). At the very end, it turned out that an old video card I was using was going bad, and I was amazed at the symptoms it caused as a result--I never would have suspected it.

However, this sounds like an HDD problem or something wrong with the HDD header on the mobo.

How long have you had the Mobo? Did you just buy it? Take it BACK NOW!! Get another copy of the same mobo (because it is a good one) and start again. Also, do you happen to have any old CPU sitting around that you can swap out and see? Maybe an old 1700+ or something?

Just do exactly what has been said, isolate one part at a time.

There is NO WAY Windows should take 4 hours--I just did a clean install with a 3200+ chip and it took like 20 minutes, even though it said 39 minutes to go, lol :-)

I am now getting a very very happy track/plug count!

Oh, also, are you using 3 sticks of 512 RAM? What kind? Are they perfectly matched? That mobo has the nvidea dual memory capability and will sometimes freak out when you hit it with 3 sticks of RAM during install. Read your mobo manual closely. And, it really likes the RAM to be matched for CAS latency.

Try installing with only 1 stick, or maybe your 2 best matches put into the dual memory slots.



KT

[Crandall1]

That's a good point about the memory. If you're using three sticks, they have to be in a specific order, if I recall correctly. (I no longer have that mobo or manual, so I can't check.)

Also, as was mentioned, the C: drive that Windows is installing on should definitely be first in the chain, on the first channel. If the system is primarely for audio, I would do it with the program drive and the CD-ROM on channel one, program as the master. The audio drive should be alone as the channel two master.

This also includes the IDE cable itself. The master drive on the channel should be the one closest to the motherboard. The slave should go on the end.

As for some of the other comments, I don't believe the CPU is bad or seated wrongly. The machine shouldn't even post if that's at all a problem. You might want to check the BIOS and make sure the clock speed is set to "Auto." Sometimes Asus boards, the first time you post them, start out in the dumbest possible speed the CPU can do; I suppose it's conceivable that it is stuck in this mode.

I also feel that it's unlikely the video card is the issue, unless it won't come out of the VESA mode that Windows starts the install process in. But if you have a PCI video card lying around, it's worth a shot.

And finally, are you using a full, real, honest-to-goodness version of Windows? As has been stated several times, OEM versions are sometimes hardware-specific (HP does this, to name one.) And a pirated OS is a Very Bad Idea. You can't update most of the pirated copies, so you're stuck with whatever version is on the CD.

Chris Randall