Windows XP home install problems

[sundaypuncher]

I had a PII running XP home on a 80G seagate hard drive. I bought a bare bones system w/ AMD Athlon XP 2700+ processor and 512M of ram. The manufaceur has the XP certificate for this mother board. I used the video card and hard drive out of the old systems, I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled XP. I loaded the drivers for the motherboard.
Now when I try install SP2 it give me a file is corrupt message. It does that with several programs. I looked at my hardware manager and windows thinks my drive is a SCSI drive.

So I reinstall. This was extremmly painful as the install kept being unable to find files and such.
After many atempts, windows reinstalls w/the same problems.

Any help or ideas?

[DMR]

I looked at my hardware manager and windows thinks my drive is a SCSI drive.

Interesting... What exactly does Device Manager say in that regard?

[sundaypuncher]

Under disk drives It list my seagate drive as ST380011A SCSI Disk device
When it should be ATA.

[DMR]

Yes- that model is (obviously) not a SCSI drive.

The reason I asked is that drives connected to some RAID controllers (or RAID-capable motherboards) get reported/identified as SCSI drives.

Is this a possiblity?

Although I could be way off base on this, if you can give us the exact make/model of your motherboard that might help.

[sundaypuncher]

The motherboard is an Biostar M7NCD with NVidia Force2 chipset.

[DMR]

The drive being identified as SCSI really sounds to me like it has something to do with the fact that your motherboard has SATA and RAID capabilities, although I don't know if that has anything to do with the problems you're having.

Have a look at the hard drive and RAID options in the BIOS. Turn off the RAID-related settings there and see if that changes anything.

[sundaypuncher]

There are not any RAID options in BIOS, unfortunately.

I am wondering if there are other BIOS settings that would change things.
I am grasping at straws here.

[DMR]

Hmm- That mobo is at least RAID-capable; maybe RAID is an option that's only available on some versions of the board.

What are the exact errors that you're getting concerning file corruption?

[sundaypuncher]

Last night the system was crashing so much that I tried to reinstall. It won't. When it tries to load the files during install I get file is corrupt use ESC to skip, enter to retry or F3 to quit. Most files a can retry and continue at least one or two won't retry. If I start over same thing. The files that it pukes on are different each time.

I got through the file load. Now when it tries to install devices it will either give a stop error of 0x00000050, or 0x00000024 or just reboot by itself.

I realize that reinstalling was a bad idea.

[sundaypuncher]

Help I cannot get XP to install now. I get the "file xxxx.xx could not be written press enter to retry" message. At least one file will not retry. Install continues but will hang or give stop error 0x00000050.

I read somewhere that maybe the new CDROM/R/RW could be the reason for the file was incorrectly written error, so I replaced with my old CDROM, no help
I have tried both a clean install and a repaired install make no difference.

I am at the end of my rope with this one. Any help please.

The XP install disk worked fine with my old system, so I think that is not the problem, that and it is a different file that pukes each attempt.

[DMR]

Those errors as a whole do not sound good, and may be indicative of failing hardware :(

It would help if we could have the full and exact content of the Stop errors, but in the mean time:

Some general info on Stop error 0x00000024:

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+stop+error+0x00000024&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=

and the same for Stop error 0x00000050:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=windows+stop+error+0x00000050&btnG=Google+Search

[sundaypuncher]

I am going to try a different video card. All the other hardware is new or was in perfect working order.

If I get another stop code I will include all of the info on the page.

[Catweazle]

You've mentioned 512Mb of RAM. Is that 2 x 256Mb modules? If so are they the same brand or different modules?

[sundaypuncher]

It's a single stick of 512Mb memory.

Last night, I tried two different video cards I get this stop code during the install.

stop code 0x00000050(0xF80CFBC4,0x00000000,0xF84F034F,0x00000000)
setupdd.sys-address F84F034F Base at F84A1000, Datestamp 3d6dd67f

I tried to install Win98SE also. It installed but crashed repeatedly.Completely unusable.

[Catweazle]

I suspect it's a faulty or incompatible RAM module. I'd try borrowing another from somewhere and seeing if it works with different RAM in it.

Reset CMOS and try again first though.

[sundaypuncher]

After reading the link provided, I came to that same conclusion.
So, I went to the manufactuers website, apparenttly this happens alot with mushkin memory.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Hopefully I can get replacement memory Post Haste.

[sundaypuncher]

I recieved my new replacement memory last night, Windows XP install without a hitch.

hardware manager stills shows my hard drive and my cdrom as scsi,
but everything works fine, so far.

Unless it starts causing problems, I am going to let sleepings dogs lie.

[DMR]

hardware manager stills shows my hard drive and my cdrom as scsi, but everything works fine, so far.

Unless it starts causing problems, I am going to let sleepings dogs lie.

My hunch is still that the SCSI issue is RAID-related, but as you said, if it's working fine...