Installing XP from SATA optical drives

[ddrueding]

Any experiences? Good/bad combinations?

I've got a Samsung SH-S183 DVD-RW connected to a Gigabyte GA-945GZM-S2. Vista works fine, Feisty works fine. XP crashes in the GUI part of the install with an IO error, both MSDN w/SP2 and TinyXP.

 

[Bozo]

Try using NLite to slipstream the motherboard SATA drivers to XP.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Howell]

Does XP have the F6 option to load SCSI drivers? If so that's where you load the SAS drivers. Whoops, you said SATA. Hmm, I don't build the desktops but I've not heard of anything special.

 

[ddrueding]

The motherboard in question (and all the motherboards I've used for at least 3 years) have SATA integrated into the BIOS. No F6, no special drivers. Hard drives and opticals are detected in the BIOS and boot successfully.

 

[Bozo]

Is the BIOS detecting the optical drive?
The Plextor SATA DVD burner I installed had to be attached to the SATA 0 slot. Dumb, but that is the only way it would work.

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

BIOS detects just fine. XP without extra drivers detects it just fine at first, and only after copying files, rebooting, and going into the GUI-based portion of the install does it pop up with the I/O device error.

 

[ddrueding]

GA-945GZM-S2 uses the Intel 945 chipset with the ICH7 southbridge. It seems that even though the BIOS detects all the drives fine, and the first part of the windows installation proceeds without needing to press F6, it is still required to prevent the windows install from crashing at the beginning of the GUI setup phase. Maybe?

I've been trying different floppy drivers for some time now, and none seem to make a difference. I'm about to run out and get an IDE optical drive and an IDE hard drive and just forget the whole thing.

 

[Bozo]

Is there anything installed that could change the drive letter after the reboot. XP might be looking for D, but BIOS reports it as E ??
Is the boot order floppy, cd, hard drive?
BIOS setting 'Plug and play OS = no'?

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

There is a multi-card reader, but I disconnected it before I began. Floppy is disabled, boot order is CD, HDD.

 

[ddrueding]

Something else is up. I replaced the optical and HDD with IDE versions and get the same error. I'll be glad when I can move everyone to Vista...

 

[MaxBurn]

Bad media?

 

[ddrueding]

Bad media?

I've tried multiple media, from retail disks to MSDN downloaded ISOs to TinyXP.

 

[Bozo]

Flash or Re-Flash the BIOS??

Bozo :joker:

 

[mubs]

I think Bozo's right - second post from the top. Looks like Vista and Feisty have in-built support for something that XP doesn't.

 

[Bozo]

Yesterday I ran into a similar problem. XP would not load on a new motherboard. Slipstreaming SP2 into it solved the problem.

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

The retail and MSDN disks have SP2 in them already. The BIOS is a neat idea, though I have thrown in the towel. I swapped it for a Gigabyte M51GM-S2G / 4200+ from a friend who is already running Vista.

 

[ddrueding]

Alright, I'm officially incompetent. I put in the new motherboard (which previously was in two different computers, both running XP at some point). I replaced the optical drive again (PATA) and wrote zeros to the entire disk (PATA) and finally ran the mfgr's full test suite. I also ran Memtest86+ for a couple hours and burned a new copy of XP Pro, including verification, from a brand new burner connected to my machine. To make sure the image was good, I went into VMWare and installed just fine using the image.

Same error.

I'm about to go and buy a vomit-box with XP on it, I can't make the customer wait any longer.

 

[mubs]

Sorry DD. The only thing I can relate to this now is bad power. One place I worked, two PCs that shared a power outlet kept borking with strange errors, and I just couldn't fix it. But they'd run just fine in the lab. I finally bought expensive surge protectors / noise filter power strips, and the problems went away. It could be bad power in general, or bad power from that outlet, or a bad power supply that heats up after some time or is unable to provide the juice that that part of the XP install requires (maybe the CPU util goes 100%).

Other than this, I give up too.

 

[Bozo]

Sorry DD. The only thing I can relate to this now is bad power. One place I worked, two PCs that shared a power outlet kept borking with strange errors, and I just couldn't fix it. But they'd run just fine in the lab. I finally bought expensive surge protectors / noise filter power strips, and the problems went away. It could be bad power in general, or bad power from that outlet, or a bad power supply that heats up after some time or is unable to provide the juice that that part of the XP install requires (maybe the CPU util goes 100%).

Other than this, I give up too.

I think the power supply is the only thing that hasn't been replaced..right?

Bozo :joker:

 

[ddrueding]

Yep. And I should have been suspicious from the start; it's that small form factor PS that comes with the NSK2200. We'll see...

 

[ddrueding]

Nope. Replaced it with a known-good 500W PS and I get the same error.

It's interesting; the first part of setup runs fine, but when it boots into the GUI the following happens:

1. GUI setup screen appears
2. CD-ROM starts to spin up, then doesn't
3. CD-ROM light blinks repeatedly, without spinning up
4. Setup screen advertising text continues to change, and "time remaining" shows the standard 38 minutes, but no progress bar is displayed.
5. After about 2 minutes of this, it comes up and gives an error that basically means it can't read from the CD. Keep in mind I've tried many CDs and many optical drives.

 

[P5-133XL]

Just as a potential side-step of the issue: How about, formatting the HD, and copying the contents of the CD to the HD and then installing from there?

 

[ddrueding]

Just as a potential side-step of the issue: How about, formatting the HD, and copying the contents of the CD to the HD and then installing from there?

Great Idea. I just tried installing XP to a VM, and then using Acronis to copy the image over...BSOD.

 

[ddrueding]

Just as a potential side-step of the issue: How about, formatting the HD, and copying the contents of the CD to the HD and then installing from there?

This worked! Awesome! I'm not sure why it worked, but I'll take it.

Mark, the next time we are within 50 miles of each other, I owe you several beers

(Portland in February?)

 

[P5-133XL]

You're welcome. Feb. 2008 is fine, as far as I know: I don't drink though ...

 

[mubs]

I'm happy for you, DD, but I don't like unexplained mysteries. Why did you have those failures? You swapped out practically everything.

 

[ddrueding]

No idea. None of them were failures, really. Considering that at every step of the way I was booting Ubuntu and running all the tests (drive fitness, prime95, memtest86+, BIOS voltages/temps). I even installed Vista on a number of the configurations, just to see what was going on. Everything works AFAIK. It's just some super-sized XP glitch.