Mandi
05-26-2005, 01:17 PM
I think I must have abused computers or bad mouthed IBM in another life, because I have the worst karma for this stuff :confuz: .
So, Lucky Daughter #1 is getting a system rebuild from me. We will ignore the fact the impetus for most of her upgrades is the fact that she cannot (will not) read and comprehend "System Requirements" listed on software she buys herself, and subsequently wants to install on MY machine . . . I think I see an ulterior motive in there somewhere LOL.
Anyway, she's being brought up to a fairly current machine - 2.4 gHz CPU, 512 MB Ram, nice new ASUS mobo. I even got her a new case, new optical drives (CD-RW and DVD-ROM) and cool round IDE cables, because the box is smallish. What a nice mom, huh :dopey: ? Hopefully this will keep her in software heaven (and off my machine!!) for some time to come.
I had hoped to just swap her HDD (a 60 gig IBM, with a fairly recent fresh install of everything) straight over and help it through detecting all the new gear, but I got stuck in this "Windows didn't shut down properly, do you want to start in Safe Mode, or use the last known good config, or just start normally?" reboot loop. No matter what option I picked, I would get this screen, select something, it would stall for perhaps another 20 seconds, the windows progress bar starts to display . . . and it would shut down and restart.
I decided to wipe the drive (since I had her data backed up) and even did a low level (zero fill) format while I was at it - I like to do that on new builds using used HDD's anyway. I went to set up the drive with new partitions and formatting . . . and nothing was happening. The machine wouldn't boot to *anything,* no matter how I tweaked the boot order in BIOS. Not the floppy, not a CD-ROM, not the hard drive (not that there was any boot info on the hard drive at that point.)
I pulled the drive and put it in my own machine, and was able to install WinXP just fine, no problems at all. I went ahead and installed updates through SP2 (since I have SP1 and SP2 on CD's) and then put it back in the new machine.
No dice - same old story. I get as far as the screen that says Windows didn't shut down properly, and how would I like to deal with that? Then it shuts down no matter my selection, and restarts. I can't get it to boot to any other device still, either. I can't even get it to recognize my Handy Dandy Knoppix OS on CD, which has gotten me out of a lot of jams before. I unplugged the optical drives, and had the same result. Ditto the floppy drive. (I know backwards cables can cause boot issues, I was hoping to eliminate that with the unplugging.)
Thoughts? I'm wondering if my MoBo has bad IDE controllers or something, since it doesn't want to talk to any of the devices.
So, Lucky Daughter #1 is getting a system rebuild from me. We will ignore the fact the impetus for most of her upgrades is the fact that she cannot (will not) read and comprehend "System Requirements" listed on software she buys herself, and subsequently wants to install on MY machine . . . I think I see an ulterior motive in there somewhere LOL.
Anyway, she's being brought up to a fairly current machine - 2.4 gHz CPU, 512 MB Ram, nice new ASUS mobo. I even got her a new case, new optical drives (CD-RW and DVD-ROM) and cool round IDE cables, because the box is smallish. What a nice mom, huh :dopey: ? Hopefully this will keep her in software heaven (and off my machine!!) for some time to come.
I had hoped to just swap her HDD (a 60 gig IBM, with a fairly recent fresh install of everything) straight over and help it through detecting all the new gear, but I got stuck in this "Windows didn't shut down properly, do you want to start in Safe Mode, or use the last known good config, or just start normally?" reboot loop. No matter what option I picked, I would get this screen, select something, it would stall for perhaps another 20 seconds, the windows progress bar starts to display . . . and it would shut down and restart.
I decided to wipe the drive (since I had her data backed up) and even did a low level (zero fill) format while I was at it - I like to do that on new builds using used HDD's anyway. I went to set up the drive with new partitions and formatting . . . and nothing was happening. The machine wouldn't boot to *anything,* no matter how I tweaked the boot order in BIOS. Not the floppy, not a CD-ROM, not the hard drive (not that there was any boot info on the hard drive at that point.)
I pulled the drive and put it in my own machine, and was able to install WinXP just fine, no problems at all. I went ahead and installed updates through SP2 (since I have SP1 and SP2 on CD's) and then put it back in the new machine.
No dice - same old story. I get as far as the screen that says Windows didn't shut down properly, and how would I like to deal with that? Then it shuts down no matter my selection, and restarts. I can't get it to boot to any other device still, either. I can't even get it to recognize my Handy Dandy Knoppix OS on CD, which has gotten me out of a lot of jams before. I unplugged the optical drives, and had the same result. Ditto the floppy drive. (I know backwards cables can cause boot issues, I was hoping to eliminate that with the unplugging.)
Thoughts? I'm wondering if my MoBo has bad IDE controllers or something, since it doesn't want to talk to any of the devices.