OS Loading Errors

[Nick Yorke]

I just helped my friend put in a new motherboard, chip, and video card in his computer and it posted fine and the BIOS reported all his drives correctly but ever since then we've been unable to load an Operating System on it and have it be able to boot. We've formatted each time and have tried Windows98, 2000, and ME and all of them come up with errors when they load up. Does anyone have any ideas of what could be wrong?

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All this computer hacking is making me thursty.

[BloodRed]

Well, what are the errors it gives you when you try to load an OS?

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-BR
Win2K/XP Tips and Tweaks
The Slaughter House
SF Linux Hippy Club

[gkline]

How about clearing the CMOS and staring over? Look in the manual for the motherboard on how you clear the CMOS. Sometimes a corrupted one causes this.

[Gerbil Survivor]

This is common. Fdisk, then reformat. Disk cluster size is now dynamically linked to Hard disk size. I'll guess the HD has one cluster size and the new Mobo HD controllers set the cluster size to a differnet size depending upon the drive size. Repartitioning and reformatting in FAT32 solves this problem.

If not look for a bios update as it sounds like a HD-Mobo issue.

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P3/866@1Ghz
Asus Cusl2-C Mobo running bios ver. 1007.
384MB PC133 @ 122Mhz
2x20Gb WD Caviar HDs
Lite On 16x10x40 CDRW
ATI Radeon 64 DDR
Mandrake Linux 8.1 on IDE1, W98 on IDE2
Hybrid Cable @ 384Kbps dl/32Kbps ul

[Nick Yorke]

The errors seemed to be with the harddrive and that it is write protected and a Windows right protection error. I can try clearing the CMOS but we haven't really made any changes too it. The only thing I could think of that could be wrong of how I set up the hardware is the plugs for the LED lights and stuff. I don't think these would cause windows errors though would they?

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All this computer hacking is making me thursty.

[Nick Yorke]

Originally posted by Gerbil Survivor:
This is common. Fdisk, then reformat. Disk cluster size is now dynamically linked to Hard disk size. I'll guess the HD has one cluster size and the new Mobo HD controllers set the cluster size to a differnet size depending upon the drive size. Repartitioning and reformatting in FAT32 solves this problem.

If not look for a bios update as it sounds like a HD-Mobo issue.

Yeah we've formatted it to NTFS and FAT32 and back and forth a couple of times. The harddrive wasn't partitioned before so I wouldn't need to run FDisk. Or does it do something other then get ride of partitions? I've never really used it either so how would I if I have too. Also we can't get drivers for the MoBo yet since the OS errors and forses us to restart before we can get into it.

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All this computer hacking is making me thursty.

[Gerbil Survivor]

Dude, read the motherboard manual. There's about a gazillion things that can go wrong with a mobo installation. The first step after is always to boot into bios to set it for the particular system. It sounds like this hasn't been done properly. Use the manual, follow the directions. The new bioses coming out now are pretty complicated and have a lot of features. I installed mine in July and spent a whole day on it.

Good luck.

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P3/866@1Ghz
Asus Cusl2-C Mobo running bios ver. 1007.
384MB PC133 @ 122Mhz
2x20Gb WD Caviar HDs
Lite On 16x10x40 CDRW
ATI Radeon 64 DDR
Mandrake Linux 8.1 on IDE1, W98 on IDE2
Hybrid Cable @ 384Kbps dl/32Kbps ul

[Gerbil Survivor]

Originally posted by Nick Yorke:
The errors seemed to be with the harddrive and that it is >>>>>> write protected <<<<<< and a Windows right protection error.

This system wouldn't have been like a Gateway or something that the old mobo was pulled out of? I know a lot of box systems hide a partition on the disk to save an image of the system for reinstalling after a problem. To get rid of it you gotta get a hard disk utility from the HD manufacturer, put it on a bootable floppy, boot to the floppy, then use the diagnostics tool and 'write zeros to the hard drive'. That will get rid of any hidden partitions and allow for a new OS to load to track 0 (which sounds like it's write-protected, i.e. a proprietary box).


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P3/866@1Ghz
Asus Cusl2-C Mobo running bios ver. 1007.
384MB PC133 @ 122Mhz
2x20Gb WD Caviar HDs
Lite On 16x10x40 CDRW
ATI Radeon 64 DDR
Mandrake Linux 8.1 on IDE1, W98 on IDE2
Hybrid Cable @ 384Kbps dl/32Kbps ul