Problem Installing Win XP Pro SP3 on a 160 GB HD

D

dunk122

Geek Trainee
I have a new Seagate Barracuda Ultra ATA ST3160215A 160 GB which I want to install as a primary master instead of a failing HD. The mainboard is P4 VMM2 (VIA VT8751 Northbridge and VT8233 Southbridge chipset)
I installed the HD and it was automatically detected by BIOS, ran the XP SP3 setup, created two partitions (equal size), formatted the C: partition to install Windows on it (fast - NTFS). After copying files from the CD to the disk and restarting was completed (stage 1 of the setup), the system displays ‘Setup is restarting….’ Then I get a fatal system error:

Stop: c000021a {Fatal System Error} The Windows Logon Process System process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000139 (0x00000000 0x0000000) The system has been shut down.

It seems to me like this error occurs when Windows tried to access the HD to run the setup.
I know that I need to enable Logical Block Addressing (LBA) for Windows to handle 160 GB, but I noticed that when my BIOS (AMI BIOS 2000) auto-detects the HD LBA doesn’t show as enabled.
The only way to enable it seems to be entering the HD sepecs manually (‘User’ mode).

However, BIOS doesn’t allow me to enter any value for the cylinders, heads…etc. they remain zero (but I can enable LBA), and so the HD cannot be accessed. When I try to navigate with the arrows to type a value, it just jumps over to the on/off settings (LBA, BLK…etc.)!
I hope I don’t need a BIOS upgrade. :x:
This is puzzling. Can anybody offer any help?
Does Seagate have a utility for IDE disks that can automatically enter the specs as well as enabling LBA?
And can one get through without enabling LBA?

I’m stock with this HD now and it’s hard to find IDEs with smaller capacity.

Your help is really appreciated
 
Thank you BoBBYI986 for your help.

But I couldn't find any settings that can change the IDE mode as you described, even after consulting the mainboard's manual.
I don't know if this is relevant or not, but there's a setting 'OnBoard IDE' with options: Disabled/Enabled, Both (for HDD and CD). It's set to 'Both'. Is this related?
 
what you mentioned is just to enable the onboard IDE controller to support both opticle drives and Hard drives.

Is your hard drive running on the same port/bus as the opticle drive or are they both on seperate ports/busses?
Have you tried using another OS disk?
 
BoBBYI986 said:
what you mentioned is just to enable the onboard IDE controller to support both opticle drives and Hard drives.

Is your hard drive running on the same port/bus as the opticle drive or are they both on seperate ports/busses?
Have you tried using another OS disk?
Click to expand...


My hard drive is connected to its own IDE port on the mainboard, the optical drive is connected to another one.

If you mean by 'OS disk' an installation CD; then no, I haven't tried another OS disk (the one I tried was the only one I have :O). Can the OS disk be the source of the problem?
 
Hi yes in some cases the OS disk can be a problem. The problem could also be the hard drive cache memory. Try installing windows xp on a different machine with the same OS disk and the same hard disk and same opticle drive and same data cables. see if you get the same error. then you can troubleshoot your way through each componenet. Hoepfully the problem won't be with your onboard IDE controller.
 
Thanks BoBBYI986 for your help.

I was bale to solve the installation problem by using SeaTools for DOS to reduce the capacity of the HDD to something below 137 GB and then reformatting.

I thought that was it, but it turned out that there were more troubles ahead.

Everything was fine with the system partition, but when I tried to format the second partition using Computer Manager, Windows stopped and gave the following BSOD:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR
…………………
Parameters of the error:
000000F4 00000003 80e5dba8 80e5dd1c 805fa158

The first formatting attempt ran until 100% before the error, while subsequent attempts fail right away and the computer restarts.
I thought I heard a very slight clicking sound while the disk was in use, so I changed the power supply since a faulty power cable caused my old HDD to produce a loud clicking sound (although it’s still working, I think there’s been some damage).
However, that didn’t solve the problem.

Why does formatting fail? It doesn’t seem to be a power supply problem…
could it be the ribbon cable? The IDE controller? And why did it work for one partition but not for the other?
 
The problem just keeps escalating!

When there’s some more-than-usual load on the HDD (such as installing a program), I hear strange noises and get BSODs with gibberish (no readable error message). Then, after the system reboots I get ‘S.M.A.R.T. status bad drive. Backup and replace. Press F1’.

Does that really mean that the disk is bad, or is it caused by a faulty IDE controller?
Is it possible that other faulty components have caused damage to the new HDD?

This system is a headache. I would like to hear your suggestions before I give up.
 
Hi, I would send the disk back and get it replaced, I doubt it's your IDE controller or data cables. I think it's a problem with the hard drive cache memory. The kernel error is basically your system not page filing, swopping data in and out of RAM, the kernel deals with all that by allocating space in ram and paging requested data in and paging non requested data out with the hard drive and cache.
 
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