Hey everyone, I understand that the title sounds like a simple problem but let me explain. So This computer will boot the windows xp cd, and I go through it without a hitch. It recognizes my hard drive, I can format and partition it, then it copies all the files. But when it goes to restart it just freezes with a black screen and a blinking white line. 1.) i tested the hard drive and its fine, I even tried with a hard drive I know works, no luck. 2.) The Bios recognizes the hard drive fine, even did a SMART test and everything was fine. Tried restoring defaults in BIOS and reseting the jumper for the CMOS. 3.) Tried using different memory,tried on Secondary IDE channel ( same channel as my CDROM and that works fine). 4.) tried different windows Cds, which I know work. 5.) tried a windows live cd, it worked and was able to see and manage all the files on the hard drive. Only thing I can figure is that maybe for some reason its the motherboard or the onboard hard drive controller, but if that was the case i dont think i would be able to access the hard drive at all. Any advice please email or message me here ASAP. Thanks email: curt6208(at)gmail.com
Is it an asus board ? If so, you need to have the right drivers for the sata controller. generic drivers won't work.
its a compaq with a ASUS A7V8X-LA motherboard, the only reason I didnt suspect RAID drivers was because windows setup appeared to correctly detected the hard drive. Like I said it even made it all the way through copying files but after restart would freeze at a black screen with blinking white cursor. I will try loading the Raid drivers at setup.
Sounds to me like you don't have the hard drive you are installing to in the BIOS boot order for some reason though I'm surprised that would be the case after a reset BIOS. Try manually setting the hard drive to be the first boot device in the BIOS. It is unlikely to be RAID drivers since windows installer wouldn't recognise the drive to copy file to if that was the case.
Ya thats why I didnt think of a RAID driver. Problem turned out to be a bad Hard drive, why I ruled this out was because i used the slave out of my main desktop to test it out with, and tried installing windows without repartitioning the hard drive or reformating the hard drive. its finally up and running, thanks for the suggestions.
ASUS' RAID utilities cause all sorts of problems for XP, sometimes even disabling doesn't work however if you get the preinstall drivers from ASUS' website you can bypass all these issues from the get go by using the F6 prompt in the installer.