If it's not one thing, it's another...

[MikeSamuel]

Just bought a load of components to upgrade a friends system.

AMD Athlon XP 2000
Jetway 830CH M/board
512Mb 133MHz RAM
IBM 60Gb HDD

So, I finally get the hardware seemingly working fine after several small hiccups. I'm quite experienced in building and setting up systems, and have never known so many problems!

Firstly attempted to install Win XP. Booted from the CD, got as far as it creating Start Menu data in Setup, and it kept stopping itself due to a "Stop 0x0000000A Irql_Not_Less_or_Equal" type error.

So after multiple attempts I decided to reformat and put Windows ME on the system as I have better knowledge of it and it is the first time I've tried to use XP. ME then decided to have several registry problemsa after a (supposedly) successful installation, and so I thought I'd try 98...98 also had registry problems that the registry checker program could not fix.

Have gone through flashing the BIOS, and re-attempted XP and ME installations again and they are still problematic in the same way and ME won't even boot up now after the first stage of installation.

I think this must be a hardware problem, but I've never come across anything so difficult to diagnose. Any ideas?

Cheers,
Mike

[Spitoon]

Are you doing clean installs (i.e. formatting the hard disk before each installation)? If not, I would try that first. (Teaching Granny to suck eggs I'm sure but don't forget to back up any user data first because you'll lose everything on the drive).

If you've already done a clean install, I would agree that it looks like a hardware problem. If you've only done upgrades the hardware may not necessarily be broken, perhaps just not happy with one of the software installations. I haven't come across the error message myself but the Microsoft KnowledgeBase (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311564) makes it sound like a hardware compatibility issue. The IRQ in the error suggests some sort of problem between the motherboard and a peripheral.

Clutching at straws a bit, try taking out any cards that are not necessary (modem, audio etc) and see if you get any further.

Good luck

[MikeSamuel]

Cheers, you've been through some of the steps I've already taken...I always clean format before installs, and I've had a look at the knowledge base! :D I think I will pull the modem out and try it that way tomorrow, but the VGA and sound are on board so shouldn't conflict...I think it's down to hard drive/motherboard conflict... :(

[Jet II]

I've never had any problems with hard drive/mobo setup but have recently had several with duff memory - you could try slapping in some different (hopefully proven in other systems) memory.

Otherwise try flashing the BIOS - I know its a bit late but personally I wouldn't recommend Jetway mobo's - far better to pay the bit extra for well known quality brands such as Abit, Asus, Gigabyte etc.

Good luck with your probs, hope you get it fixed.

[timmcat]

Am I right in thinking you must format the MBR (Master Boot Record) seperately to completly wipe the hard drive clean.? the usual Format and Fdisk options leave this sector alone (I think.. anyone else like to comment?)

Tim

[Spitoon]

timmcat - I'm not 100% sure but if you've used FDISK I don't think there's any realistic or practical way to recover the data. If security is your worry there are some excellent disk 'scrubbers' around (some are shareware or even freeware).

[tony draper]

I have had probs in the past building new systems with all the cards installed, strip out everything but the graphic card.
Another thing I have done in the past is to start the windows instal on a spare machine when it gets to checking for installed hardware switch off, stick the H/D in the new machine and away it goed quite happily.

[MikeSamuel]

As I remember from sketchy A Level computing lessons, last year with a bad hangover, when something is "deleted" from a disk it is simply flagged as erased, and is only totally irretrievable if it is overwritten. This may be total rubbish, but I've always found this an interesting question and I do believe there are companies out there who can retrieve such data. By all means correct me if I'm wrong here!

By the way, am just about to attempt rerunning the OS installation with a fresh stick of RAM...will give you an update on the results!!!

[rickity]

MikeS
Your right , when you delete a file, the file allocation table is flagged as the file deleted and the sector/track marked as free to be written to the actual data is still there untill its over written by the next write to the disk if the next write is allocated to that particular space. Getting that data back is a little tricky in the good old days of dos there was a utility called undelete which basically reversed the flag but now those utilities can only be found in special disk manager programes.

as somebody mention MBR or master boot record, this is not touched when doing a format, but can be re written by using FDISK to create and then remove a partition. Found out the hard way when a password was lost to a boot manager program

[The Nr Fairy]

Mikey / rickity :

Microsoft OS without a Recycle bin ( i.e. DOSes and early Windows versions ) do that - mark a file as deleted, and the space is overwritten on an as-needed basis.

Recycle bins work slightly differently, in that the file is sort of marked as deleted, but the space is kept until all the truly free space is gone. I'm not so sure of the exact algorithm used, but it's a tad more intelligent.

[ratsarrse]

Irql_Not_Less_or_Equal

Look at this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;311564

I think you need to isolate which device is actually causing the problem and install the OS without it if possible. If it something like a graphics card then it may be more of a problem. You may be able to plug the problem device back in when XP is installed & update the driver successfully.

Did the HD come with any utilities? Some need to be setup before you use them (over and above using fdisk or similar).

Am I right in thinking you must format the MBR (Master Boot Record) seperately to completly wipe the hard drive clean.? the usual Format and Fdisk options leave this sector alone (I think.. anyone else like to comment?)

Seagate offer free disk utilities which are designed for their drives but I think will work for most other drives. One handy function is the abilty to write 0s to the MBR, or if you have a lot of time on your hands, write 0s to every sector on the disk (I imagine that this will take a long time!) This completely destroys all data on the drive beyond hope of recovery. Quite handy if you sell your PC at a later date and don't want people ogling your credit card details, letters and vast porn collection. Ahem.

[ck4707]

ratarse

you can get file shredders on the internet which will do this for you - saves a lot of time!! Try http://www.tucows.com

ratsarsse

sorry!!!! misspelt your name - no offence intened