Bluescreen on Windows install

[McC]

Recently upgraded a bunch of core system components (mobo, procs, PSU) and, as a consequence, must reinstall Windows (2000). The CD portion of the install process works fine. It formats the partition, copies all the necessary files over, and then reboots. When it comes back up, though, one of two things happen (neither being good):

1) With CPU Internal cache disabled: Windows fully loads in the black/white DOS-style screen. It then switches to the White/gray/blue/color loading screen with the left-right scrolling light blue/dark blue bar and the blue-box status indicator. The scrolling bar continues to scroll indefinitely, while the blue-box status indicator makes no progress whatsoever (I let it sit for 15 minutes with no results).

2) With CPU Internal cache enabled: As above, but on the color loading screen, it gets about halfway through the blue-box status indicator and then blue screens, citing either a 0xA, 0xC5, 0x1E, or a gripe about how a device driver has corrupted the executive pool.

I've stripped down the entire system to just the bare essentials: CPUs, 1GB RAM (full is 2GB), one CD drive (my Plextor CD-RW rather than my new Sony DVD-RW), two IDE hard drives, and nothing else, and I still run into the same errors as I do when the machine is fully loaded. The video card is about two years old and is a PNY Quadro4 900XGL. The RAM is about six months old (if even that) and is Apacer PC2100 registered ECC SDRAM (512 MB DIMMs). The motherboard is a MSI K7D Master-L. The procs are brand-new AMD Athlon 2400+ MPs.

Help

[General Zod]

two IDE hard drives? did you set one to master, one to slave, and then install the OS onto the proper master drive? or maybe you should only leave the master drive, install windows OS and install the secondary IDE drive after you've finished installing the OS?

[McC]

two IDE hard drives? did you set one to master, one to slave, and then install the OS onto the proper master drive?

Haven't changed the drive configuration from the old machine, and this is how they were configured then

or maybe you should only leave the master drive, install windows OS and install the secondary IDE drive after you've finished installing the OS?

I've thought about that, but I'm not really sure why some of the errors that crop up would even be remotely related to IDE drives.

[General Zod]

i can't think of anything else that might be causing the problem offhand (though maybe someone else could). it just seemed that there might be a conflict with the IDE drives if you'd installed the OS on the wrong one. you sure everything was installed properly? enough thermal paste on the heat sink, etc.?

[McC]

Yep, the procs are running nice and cool (54 is the highest temp I've seen so far). And I'm not sure what you mean by installed on the "wrong one" I've got two IDE drives: C/G and D. The OS is always on C, with G and D being archival/data drives. Delete/format C, and reinstall. It's pretty cut and dry...

[General Zod]

Yep, the procs are running nice and cool (54 is the highest temp I've seen so far). And I'm not sure what you mean by installed on the "wrong one" I've got two IDE drives: C/G and D. The OS is always on C, with G and D being archival/data drives. Delete/format C, and reinstall. It's pretty cut and dry...

as in, installed the OS on the slave drive as opposed to the master drive.

[McC]

Yeah, but that's a newbie mistake

[Vertigo1]

Umm....theres nothing wrong with installing an OS on the slave drive. Its just a matter of editing the boot.ini to point to it or add an entry so you can select it.

[Ligier]

Do you have the latest BIOS on the motherboard? Have you tried updating the motherboard's BIOS?

[McC]

Do you have the latest BIOS on the motherboard? Have you tried updating the motherboard's BIOS?

I've got version 1.9 and the latest is 1.91. Not sure how much updating would help. It's also particularly problematic for me, since the PC is the only thing I have with a floppy drive.

[Super-Gagme]

There should be hex-code errors with the bluescreen that will shed some light on what's wrong. Can you write them down and tell us?

[McC]

You mean you want the specifics? I mentioned which hex error codes are appearing in the OP. If you want the specifics, they change each time. It's almost always a 0x0 read error (third parameter), though. I'll post some examples when I get home.

[Vendetta]

The most useful number is the first one that comes up, that's the one that tells you what the actual error is/

The ones you're getting all point to invalid memory access requests, which means there's either a driver on there the system doesn't like, (misloaded or incorrect), or possibly a bad RAM module.

Try taking one of the RAM modules out at a time, iif the problem only occurs with one of them, it's fucked. If it's still there with either, it's not likely to be the modules themselves

Another potential cause will be an ACPI conflict. Try turning off ACPI support in the BIOS and reinstalling windows. This could be caused by a bios issue requiring update or a bad BIOS/board.

[Vertigo1]

McC, nab a bootable Linux distro (Knoppix, Mandrake Move, etc) and boot off of that. Then goto your C drive (will be mounted as /mnt/hd1 or /mnt/hda..its been a while since I've used unix based systems so I don't remember which it is) and open up boot.ini in any text editor.

Change this:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

to this:

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Or simply add that last one as a second entry and make it the default boot option by changing this:

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

to this:

default=multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

You're getting bluescreens because you've changed motherboards. You MIGHT have had a chance to boot normally if your IDE controller were made by the same manufacturer. See, 2000 is seeing your new controller and is going "wtf?! I don't know what to do with this!" and crashes. You either have to edit your boot.ini as above or repair the win2000 install in the primary drive. (NO FORMAT IS REQUIRED!)

Or, if you want to go the cheap route, switch jumpers on the two drives (master -> slave on drive 1, slave -> master on drive 2) and try to boot that way.

[McC]

Vertigo: Well, that's actually a moot operation at this point. The first thing I did when Windows flipped out was simply format the partition it's installed on and attempt reinstall. The blue screens I'm getting are during the reinstall process. After phase one (copying install files from CD to disk), the Windows loading screens appear, and about halfway through the second loading screen (the one in color), I get bluescreens. Consistent point every time. I never get far enough into the process to finalize the install.

[Vertigo1]

Did you clear your master boot record? (boot off a DOS floppy and type "fdisk /mbr")

[McC]

No, didn't do that. Sort of a moot point, since my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive with which to make a boot disk.

[Vertigo1]

No, didn't do that. Sort of a moot point, since my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive with which to make a boot disk.

Well, you can always boot off of the Win2k CD, goto the recovery console under Repair and run fixboot (I think thats the command).

Question: Have you stuck the previous motherboard into the case (or into another) to verify that the hardware is still working?

[McC]

No, I sent the previous motherboard back home for my parents to hold on to. Don't really have space for it in my apartment.

I'll try fixboot from the RC.

[McC]

Okay, well, I took the second processor out and tried again...no dice. Then my girlfriend suggested that I try the other processor in the primary slot by itself...and somehow that made it work! Windows is currently in the set-up phase. I'll post more as I know more. I'm particularly curious as to whether or the second proc will work once Windows is updated and such, or if it's corrupted in some way.