I think it's hardware

[tombo]

I'm trying to put together:

MOTHERBOARD
MB ABIT® IC7-G i875/ICH5-R chipset, Socket 478, 800MHz BUS, ATX format, Intel® P4, audio, Gigbit LAN on board

CPU
Intel P4 - 2.4 GHz 512kcache socket 478 - 800 FSB

RAM
DDRAM 512MB PC400 APACER® CL2.5

HD
MAXTOR® DiaMaxPLUS® 160GB 8MB CACHE SERIAL ATA

GC
VGA ManLi GeForce FX 5200 128MB TV OUT 8xAGP LITE

BOX
Midi MS® 350W

XP and MAXTOR drivers installation all goes OK, but when I'm trying to start it up the machine freezes (quite early on XP start-up gif thing). First I thought it was because of MAXTOR (larger than 137GB), so I replaced it with my old WD ATI only to get the same result. When I switch to installing Win2000 instead - it seems to be working OK. I'm puzzled. Please help.

[suRoot]

oook (?) so it works FINE with your old hard drive, but the newone freezes.... what part of the POST does it freeze or is it random?? if it's random i would suspect the ram, if ts the same point all the signes point to hard drive

[tombo]

Nah, with XP it freezes with both drives, but it works just fine with win2000. As for the freeze point it's the same (early on at XP start-up GIF blue-line-train).

[Thong_Ispector]

You might try a different XP CD

[tombo]

I will. It works fine on 2000 (which I prefer), but I've got to find out what's going on.

[condor117]

check for win xp service pack2 it could be a driver problem

[maggoth]

XP and MAXTOR drivers installation all goes OK, but when I'm trying to start it up the machine freezes (quite early on XP start-up gif thing). First I thought it was because of MAXTOR (larger than 137GB), so I replaced it with my old WD ATI only to get the same result. When I switch to installing Win2000 instead - it seems to be working OK. I'm puzzled. Please help.

Check your BIOS that your hard drives have RAID disabled and the drivers you installed are not for RAID only setups. Since the computer freezes after Maxtor driver installation, It's pretty likely that the problem lies within the drivers.

It sounds like the usual problem which occurrs when installing RAID drivers on BASE setup or BASE drivers on RAID setup. On the next boot, it's either a freeze or a blue screen.

Did you install the same drivers to your Win200 or different ones or none at all? Is that old WD ati an IDE drive?