New Hard drive / WinXP Installation problems

[andrew4728]

I purchased (3) new Western Digital 500GB SATA2 hard drives recently but I am having trouble installing WinXP Pro on them. I have never seen this type of problem occur.

The installation goes through with no problems. Insert Disk, it sees the 500GB hard drive, format it with NTFS, installs windows with no errors. When the computer reboots, it gives me the administrator login prompt. Once I login however, Nothing is working correctly. If I try to run Iexplorer, it pops up an OPEN WITH window which I found very odd. When I right click on the C: drive to view the NTFS permissions of the drive, the security tab is not there at all. Also, only 5 services are running on the machine :
Cryptographic Services
Plug and Play
Protected Storage
Remote Procedure Call
Windows Audio

Any standard WinXP Pro installation will have WAY more services running. When I attempt to start many of the standard services, they fail. It is almost as if the Administrator account is corrupt or something and doesn't have permissions to run anything or view anything.

I have done the following to troubleshoot it :
Swapped hard drive twice (attempted on all 3 of the new drives).
Installed all 3 hard drives as secondary drives (booting WinXP off of an IDE hard drive on the same system). All 3 drives appear to be working fine, formatted all 500GB and can view NTFS settings.

Used 2 completely different installations. I am using WinXP Pro Volume addition. The first round of attempts was using a WinXP Volume disk I have that does not have any service packs built into it. I also tried using Nlite to incorporate SP2 into this installation to see if that would make a diff and it did not. I also have a completely seperate WinXP Pro volume installation that has SP2 built into it (downloaded directly from MS and burned to disk). Same problems occur.

Used Western digitals boot disk to create a 30GB partition only and install onto that using both installation disks. Same problems.

The system is :
MOBO : Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
CPU : AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+
RAM : 2GIG (1GIGX2)
the IDE drive I am currently using is a Western Digital 80GIG.

When I originally built the system, I was using 2 western Digital 36GIG raptors (SATA1) with raid0. I had no problems with this until the drives failed on me.

I work with computers and install windows XP Pro OFTEN but have never seen this type of problem. I can't find anyone with a similar problem online, and can't even determine what to SEARCH for to find answers. If anyone has any answers or recommendations I would appreciate it!

Thank You!

Andrew

 

[linney]

Do you have a copy of BartPE around the place, if so, does that run on your machine?

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Do any of your failed installs allow access to Safe Mode, if so, do you see the Security Tab from there? Can you access the Event Viewer from any Mode, or the .evt files (C:\WINDOWS\system32\config) to read in another machine?

Are there any clues in the Setup logging?

243996 - How to Enable Verbose Logging in Windows 2000 GUI-Mode Setup

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=243996

Windows Setup and Device Installation Logging

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/install/setupapi.mspx

You can also review the Setupapi.log file, the Setupact.log file, and the Setuperr.log file (in the %windir% folder) to try to determine any problems.

I wonder what would happen if you ran a repair install over any of these failed installs?

Is the Bios updated, and set to run on Safe defaults? Are the settings in the Bios correct for the type of hard drive?

Are there drivers to be inserted at the F6 stage of Setup?

Like you, I have not heard of anything similar to this before.

 

[cdogg]

When I start seeing crazy things like this, I strip the machine down to the bare bones installation (mobo, cpu, ram, video card, DVD/CD-ROM and one hard drive).

I assume you've tried this, but from your description, I couldn't tell for sure. It definitely sounds like the install is not completing entirely for some reason. More often than not, it's because of a hardware component. Easy for me to say, I know!!

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[andrew4728]

Thanks for the responses guys. Great info, and has helped me troubleshoot the problem some more.

One thing I forgot to point out was 1 of the 500GB hard drives was for my main rig which I am having trouble installing it on, and the other 2 are for my file server, which I will tackle later. So I am only attempting to use 1 sata hard drive on my main system. I have swapped the hard drives around to make sure it's not a failed hard drive.

I do use bart pe at work to install windows XP Pro images using MS sysprep and Acronis True image. I attempted this on my home PC and that installed and booted fine with 1 500GB NTFS partition. I am 99.9999 percent sure the hard drive is not bad.

I have found some more information however. Now, when I attempt an install of WinXP Pro from either of my installation disks, I am now getting errors. It is indicating that my CD ROM drive is not found. This is towards the end, after I have selected the workgroup name, computer name, time zone, and network settings. This error did not occur when I was attempting to install before. I did not have ANY installations errors before my initial post to you guys, and now I am. This is leading me to believe my CDROM may be the problem, or some problem with my mobo. I don't have any problems using the CDROM in windows, when I boot off the IDE hard drive, and I have burned several CDs since my problems began. What I am going to try to do next is :

Partition the 500GB HD into 3 partitions :
20GB NTFS for the operating system installation
3GB FAT32 to store a copy of the installation files
~477GB NTFS for data.

I am going to place a copy of the WINXP installation CD on the 3GB partition, and use a boot disk to install from that partition onto the 20GB. I'd actually like this setup in the long run anyways, and it will bypass installing from the CDROM, so I am going to give it a try. I will let you know how that works. If that fails, I will grab a different CDROM and give that a shot

Thanks again guys!

 

[cdogg]

I just thought about a few things and combed over your original post.

When I right click on the C: drive to view the NTFS permissions of the drive, the security tab is not there at all.

The "security" tab is not supposed to be there at first. By default, Simple file sharing is enabled which hides advanced NTFS settings and in turn, the Security tab. With Windows Explorer open, go to Tools -> Options. On the View tab scroll all the way down and un-check "Use simple file sharing".

If I try to run Iexplorer, it pops up an OPEN WITH window which I found very odd

Need more info here. Does it only happen with iexplorer.exe or is it happening with other applications? Are you just trying to double-click the desktop shortcut?

If it is more than one application, then this has the appearance of a virus (even though this is a fresh install). I've found a few hits on the net referencing that.

Also, only 5 services are running on the machine...

Before jumping to any conclusions here, I would strongly advise that you install all crucial drivers first: mobo chipset, ethernet, video card, etc... Reboot and see if the number of services changes.


~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[andrew4728]

Thanks again for all the responses guys. Very helpful advice.

I did create 3 paritions on the drive, copied my windows XP installation CD to the small partition. I then used BartPE to boot up and run the installation from that partition onto my system partition. The installation went smooth with no problems, and windows is functioning perfectly. So I then used Nlite to customize the installation a bit, added SP3, resaved to the small partition, and installed again on the system partition. It is working perfectly with no problems. I am inclined to believe there is something wrong with the CD ROM.

It's almost as though the windows installation itself is messing with the CD Rom drivers or something. It starts installing fine and gets to the point where it is registering componnents (I think) and then all of a sudden it can't find the files it needs and when I BROWSE, it the CDROM is no longer listed. It happens at the same point on both of my installation CDs (from seperate sources).

Either way, I'm a huge fan of BART PE and avoiding transfering data from optical drives because they are god awful slow

so this solution is working great for me.

BTW, I don't know if you have ever used the Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard or not, but it is nothing but a giant pain. I purchased this motherboard back when it was pretty much the latest and greatest most expensive mobo (that was a brand I liked) and I have regretted it since. I was not at all surprised that I was going to have a hard time installing windows on my new hard drive hehe.

Thanks again guys!

 

[andrew4728]

Oh, Also I just wanted to let you know the corrupt installations had all mobo drivers installed and the services were still all stopped or missing.

Also, the simple file sharing was turned off. I have a routine I do when I install WinXP (I do it often) and that is one of the first things I hit.

Also, I am a little bit obsessive compulsive about my windows XP installations. Usually, if a blue screen of any sort occurs or any kind of issues like that, I wipe and reinstall. Only if the problem comes back, will I investigate the cause. haha

Thanks again!

 

[cdogg]

Andrew,
Glad you were able to isolate the problem! Great job covering all your bases...



~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Einstein
[tab][navy]For posting policies, click [/navy]here.

 

[linney]

A frustrating set of events but at least you're over it for the time being, I hope it is a long "time being" too.