I recently attempted to re-install XP professional on a redundant Asus A7v system, which had been unused for 18 months, with the intention of creating a video and games server. This system had previously run XP, and had been cannibalised for the hard disk which was installed on the replacement A8V board.

Despite re -partitioning, re-formating and attempting re-installation of XP on the disk, at least three times, I can't get XP to install properly on the A7V system.

All goes well until XP gets to the stage where it copies the files across to the Hard disk. It then stops, at a one or more different places on each attempted installation, with a message to the effect that it can't copy a file or files. The installation program gives you the option of retrying or skipping. Cycling the CD-Rom eject/load and then retrying the copy operation does not solve the problem.

Sometimes the installation completes and sometimes it does not. Even when it completes it is missing various files and does not operate correctly. One feature which I've noticed is common to all these mis-installations is that the display of JPEG files, from whatever source, is totally corrupted, showing only a mass of coloured dots.

Any ideas as to what's causing the problem ?

The kit:- Asus A7V + AMD socket 462 processor + PC 133 memory + Maxtor 200GB IDE disk + case & power supply + microsoft natural keyboard & mouse

Nick,

27/08/07

Sounds like your XP disk is a bit dirty/scratched.. get it in the washing up bowl with some fairy liquid and give it a good clean.

You may just need a new disk

I have to say that the disk is clean - no visible dirt or fingermarks.

A couple of light scratches near the centre.

However, I would have thought, that if that was the problem, the file copying error would occur at the same place each time, but it doesn't.

Have already used a pristine micofibre cloth to clean the disk - but to no avail.

Before subjecting it to fluids, perhaps I could do a read test on it.

If I have to, I would prefer to use De-mineralsied (Distilled water) or industrial alcohol (Isopropanol) to clean it - this is a high limescale area as far as tap water is concerned.

Nick,

27/08/07

Just copied the whole disk in my new (Vista) set up from Sony DVD Rom to Hard disk. Perfect, no problems !

so may be the problem lies with the head in the old HP CD- Rom - I'll try cleaning that

Nick,

27/08/07

If the disk is ok, I would say its either a problem with the cd/dvd rom drive, or the jumper settings on the cd drive or Hard disk.

Again, I would have thought that dirty CD-ROM head and jumper mis-matches would have caused problems throughout the installation process - not just in one part of it.

At the moment both the Maxtor hard drive and the HP CD-ROM are configured as master and are plugged, using separate 40 pin/40 strand cables in to the Primary and secondary IDE connectors respectively. These connectors are rated as ATA 66/33 and are under the control of the main motherboard BIOS. My understanding is that you only needed to set a unit as "Slave", via jumper, if it shared a cable with another unit and if "Cable select" was not previously selected.

In fact the disk is rated at Ultra DMA ATA 100 and there is a separate connector on the motherboard for this type of rating. Initially, I had the Hard Disk plugged into this connector using the correct 40 pin/80-strand cable, but this produced unsatisfactory results when it came to disk partitioning and size of disk available.

On this board, Ultra DMA is supported by a separate BIOS (Promise), with the consequence that when I attempted to partition the hard disk, the system designated the second partition on the hard disk as drive E: - the system allocated D to the CD-ROM. I tried using the system with this set-up and it was slow and accompanied by a lot of switching noise from the HD ! Also, only 137GB of the disk's 200GB where available, but that may be another issue relating to support for 48 bit logical block addressing in the BIOS software.

I changed the cable to 40 pin/ 40 strand and attached it to the same UDMA port . That only succeded in reducing the operation mode to 3.

Switching the HD disk to a the slower Primary ATA (66/33) connector, using a 40-pin/40 strand cable, gave access to 187 GB ! Euh ? Presumably, there was 48 bit LBA support in the earlier main motherboard BIOS (Flashed) but not the later Promise add-on !

I beginning to think that I may have a faulty memory SDRAM, in that the problem only occurs when the memory starts to fill up under with copied files. In the meantime, I'll clean the CD-ROM heads, after 10 years it could probably stand it.

Nick,

27/08/07

Forst suspect would be the CD rom drive. Cleaning will not always do the trick either. I would suggest swapping a known good one in.

Chris

I'll have a bash at cleaning it any way - you never know.

However, I appreciate that it could well be decay of electrical and mechanical circuit items within the CD-ROM - I've had a head transport in a quality DVD player go after 3 months light use !

Nick

27/08/07

I'll have a bash at cleaning it any way - you never know.

However, I appreciate that it could well be decay of electrical and mechanical circuit items within the CD-ROM - I've had a head transport in a quality DVD player go after 3 months light use !

Nick

27/08/07

I used to sell systems that I built. I did around 500 machines on Asus motherboards and had only one warranty claim, that was a defective CD drive. Also had 3 replacements on service agreements on machines up to 5 years old, again, CD drives. Never had board, memory, graphics or HD failures and many of these machines are still going strong doing mundane office jobs 8 hours a day since 1998!

Chris

Fair Do's. Respect.

Point taken on the stats behind your experience.

However, I am keeping an open mind on cause in this particular case because I have had an earlier, albeit self-inflicted, problem with this board.

Basically, after having swapped out the processor and fan for a slightly faster processor some time ago, I had problems gettting the system to boot - I sure your familar with this problem and its cause.

Initially, I was not aware of the cause and attributed it to the board frequency, voltage and bus speed settings. Playing around with the DIP settings, with all ancillary components stripped out, I managed to induce a momentary and minature puff of smoke in the general area of the bus that connects the memory to the rest of the computer ! Couldn't see any damage on the surface of the board under a magnifying glass, but suspect that an over current was induced.

Once the booting problem was overcome, the machine seemed to operate OK until the file copying problem described above manifested itself.

Nick,

27/08/07

Respect.

Point taken on the stats behind your experience.

However, I am keeping an open mind on cause in this particular case because I have had an earlier, albeit self-inflicted, problem with this board.

Basically, after having swapped out the processor and fan for a slightly faster processor some time ago, I had problems gettting the system to boot - I sure your familar with this problem and its cause.

Initially, I was not aware of the cause and attributed it to the board frequency, voltage and bus speed settings. Playing around with the DIP settings, with all ancillary components stripped out, I managed to induce a momentary and minature puff of smoke in the general area of the bus that connects the memory to the rest of the computer ! Couldn't see any damage on the surface of the board under a magnifying glass, but suspect that an over- current was induced.

Once the booting problem was overcome, the machine seemed to operate OK until the file copying problem described above manifested itself.

Nick,

27/08/07

Respect.

Point taken on the stats behind your experience.

However, I am keeping an open mind on cause in this particular case because I have had an earlier, albeit self-inflicted, problem with this board.

Basically, after having swapped out the processor and fan for a slightly faster processor some time ago, I had problems gettting the system to boot - I sure your familar with this problem and its cause.

Initially, I was not aware of the cause and attributed it to the board frequency, voltage and bus speed settings. Playing around with the DIP settings, with all ancillary components stripped out, I managed to induce a momentary and minature puff of smoke in the general area of the bus that connects the memory to the rest of the computer ! Couldn't see any damage on the surface of the board under a magnifying glass, but suspect that an over- current was induced.

Once the booting problem was overcome, the machine seemed to operate OK until the file copying problem described above manifested itself.

Nick,

27/08/07

Oops, sounds dodgy in the extreme. Mind you, have you seen how cheap motherboards are these days? Good luck with it.

Chris

Again point taken on cheapness of motherboards, but the project was a "Nice-to-have" object which was intended to be achieved at zero cost, in a relaxed time scale, with redundant odds-and-ends out of the parts bin (Oops, Sounds like my place of work !).

I'll have a try transplanting the CD-ROM to my new system to see if the problem re-occurs thereby isolating to one or other sets of components.

Nick,

28/08/07

I used to sell systems that I built. I did around 500 machines on Asus motherboards and had only one warranty claim, that was a defective CD drive. Also had 3 replacements on service agreements on machines up to 5 years old, again, CD drives. Never had board, memory, graphics or HD failures and many of these machines are still going strong doing mundane office jobs 8 hours a day since 1998!

Chris

I find that hard to believe!!! Having built a similar number to yourself in my time using nothing but asus boards and name brand parts. We have had at least 20 boards DOA alone, and numerous motherboard failures within 12 months. And if you start then going into RAM, Graphics and HD's and you have never had a failure.. im pretty sure that out of 500+ hard drives at least 1 will die within the first month, and many more within 12 months.

PC's are not that reliable!!!!

I find that hard to believe!!! Having built a similar number to yourself in my time using nothing but asus boards and name brand parts. We have had at least 20 boards DOA alone, and numerous motherboard failures within 12 months. And if you start then going into RAM, Graphics and HD's and you have never had a failure.. im pretty sure that out of 500+ hard drives at least 1 will die within the first month, and many more within 12 months.

PC's are not that reliable!!!!

Got lucky I guess. I did have the occasional failure on burn in, cannot remember numbers but very rare, way less than 20 in total. but my customers never got a duff board with Asus. I did do a small number on Gigabyte boards for one guy (he specified the boards and hard drives) and one of them had a dead IDE port after about 18 months.

I wonder if my burn in process netted what other system builders would have has warranty returns?

Hard drives have been mostly Maxtor, some IBM in early days. Again, never had problems of any significant order. Lots of machies with more than one drive too. The warranty only covers first year, thereafter, the service contracts would also uncover any underlying trends. Did swap out 15 CD roms one time as one was defective and on returning it my supplier he told me that they had a batch problem, so pulled the rest. Expensive, but again, customer never disappointed, so they come back for more.

I kept the business going from 1998 to 2003/4 with no problems, the guy I sold to still has quite a few of the 1998 machines still running. I will ask him how they have been next time I see him.

Chris