The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
New HD + New XP pro (OEM)
Nerissa
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, about Christmas time it came to pass that I needed a new power supply for my game computer. This turned into also needing a new case. No problem so far. The new case is nice, and has a much nicer fan / cooling setup than the old one, along with a door to keep little fingers from idly pressing power buttons.
However, I'd been really tight on HD space for a while, and my game computer is the last one in the house w/o a legal operating system on it, so we figured it was as good a time as any to fix both of those things at once. We got two 250 GB SATA drives, with the intention of installing them as RAID, plus an OEM version of XP pro. Got it set up, started installing XP and it got as far as the initial reboot (to the splash screen with the blue bar moving back & forth) and then froze.
First assumption was that it was a problem with the RAID setup, but hey, two 250 GB drives separate is still better than two 40 GB drives. For that matter, ONE 250 GB is better than what I had. So, we tried installing on each drive individually without the RAID. One wouldn't even finish formatting, the other froze in the exact same spot.
Next thought was maybe my MB was having issues with SATA, so we ordered a new IDE drive and disconnected the SATA drives. Same problem.
At this point, I'm thinking it's probably not the drives themselves, since the odds of 3 bad drives in a row are pretty low.
If I swap my old HD back in, everything works just fine, but between games and development "toys" (mySQL, Python, etc.) I desperately need more space, and I don't want to lose the stuff on it by installing the new XP over it anyway.
So now I have not one, not two, but THREE 250 GB hard drives (2 SATA, 1 IDE), none of which seem to want to take a Windows install.
The CD-ROM works fine, and has been used (between trying to install the SATA drives and the new IDE drive) to install NWN2 on the old HD setup.
The MB, processor and video card haven't changed.
I know there was additional RAM purchased with the SATA drives but I'm not sure whether the current configuration has just the old RAM, just the new stuff, or both. I think a variety of configurations of RAM were tried in the initial attempt at getting it to work as RAID.
I tried cutting out anything I could that might need special drivers (wireless mouse swapped for an old one, USB devices all unplugged, etc. -- graphics card is the only one I have so I couldn't swap that out, but it seems to be displaying fine) but that doesn't seem to have made a difference.
So... any ideas what to try next? This is getting VERY frustrating.
Oh, and while I'm at it, since I have more HDs than I currently have use for, I'm considering dual-booting with Fedora on a separate HD (possibly one of the 40 GB ones, I haven't decided yet). Would I be better off doing the Fedora install (assuming I can get it to work) or the XP install first, or does it matter?
However, I'd been really tight on HD space for a while, and my game computer is the last one in the house w/o a legal operating system on it, so we figured it was as good a time as any to fix both of those things at once. We got two 250 GB SATA drives, with the intention of installing them as RAID, plus an OEM version of XP pro. Got it set up, started installing XP and it got as far as the initial reboot (to the splash screen with the blue bar moving back & forth) and then froze.
First assumption was that it was a problem with the RAID setup, but hey, two 250 GB drives separate is still better than two 40 GB drives. For that matter, ONE 250 GB is better than what I had. So, we tried installing on each drive individually without the RAID. One wouldn't even finish formatting, the other froze in the exact same spot.
Next thought was maybe my MB was having issues with SATA, so we ordered a new IDE drive and disconnected the SATA drives. Same problem.
At this point, I'm thinking it's probably not the drives themselves, since the odds of 3 bad drives in a row are pretty low.
If I swap my old HD back in, everything works just fine, but between games and development "toys" (mySQL, Python, etc.) I desperately need more space, and I don't want to lose the stuff on it by installing the new XP over it anyway.
So now I have not one, not two, but THREE 250 GB hard drives (2 SATA, 1 IDE), none of which seem to want to take a Windows install.
The CD-ROM works fine, and has been used (between trying to install the SATA drives and the new IDE drive) to install NWN2 on the old HD setup.
The MB, processor and video card haven't changed.
I know there was additional RAM purchased with the SATA drives but I'm not sure whether the current configuration has just the old RAM, just the new stuff, or both. I think a variety of configurations of RAM were tried in the initial attempt at getting it to work as RAID.
I tried cutting out anything I could that might need special drivers (wireless mouse swapped for an old one, USB devices all unplugged, etc. -- graphics card is the only one I have so I couldn't swap that out, but it seems to be displaying fine) but that doesn't seem to have made a difference.
So... any ideas what to try next? This is getting VERY frustrating.
Oh, and while I'm at it, since I have more HDs than I currently have use for, I'm considering dual-booting with Fedora on a separate HD (possibly one of the 40 GB ones, I haven't decided yet). Would I be better off doing the Fedora install (assuming I can get it to work) or the XP install first, or does it matter?
Nerissa on
0
Posts
I suppose you could boot to a live disk and build a new bootloader afterwards, and that might be a fun learning experience, but I'd find that to be a pain in the ass.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH