My computer, she's dead!

[FreqE1]

Thanks sswilson. Thats how I had it before but I did use a boot manager I downloaded. I seem to remember something about it being easy if you install XP first but if you had Vista already installed you needed some other program (can't remember the name right now).

Man, my brain goes to mush without sleep. I used to stay up 24 hours without breaking a sweat just a few years ago but now, sheesh, total mush. I'm going to bed now and am going to work on all this in the morning when my head is clearer.

Thanks again everyone and I will check out Imgburn and look into that UBCD I just burned in the morning as well. I think a good run of Memtest wouldn't hurt either.

Good night and Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

[FreqE1]

Well my saga continues. Sorry for the long post but I'm a slow typer and I'm trying to give all the info I can in anticipation of questions you may have.


I figured my OS instal was borked but my hardware was OK because Ubuntu worked off the live CD.

I put in my Ascents, started up Memtest and went to bed. No errors so I assume they are good. Since then I've tested my Ballistix by running them both individually for 2 passes each, no errors.

I put both my HD's in my other pc and deleted all partitions. I put just one drive back into my problem PC with 1 stick of my Ascents, cleared c-mos, and reconfigured the bios. Popped in my windows CD and attempted an install. It blue screens with the same error message right after it goes through the loading files routine. So I thought maybe it's my hardrive and switched it for the other one, same thing happens. I tried both drives individually with both sticks of ram individually in all four slots. Thats a lot of reseting and parts swapping believe me. I should point out that I shut the power supply off, unplug it and hit the power button once everytime before going into the case as well as ground myself to the case.

I went through the same routine with my Ballistix with the exact same results (lots more reseting and swapping).

Other things I've tried;

1/ Swapped video card out using driver sweeper.

2/ Installed floppy drive, tried with it enabled and dissabled. I then removed the floppy drive and diabled it each time I cleared c-mos.

3/ I unplugged the front audio panel and usb ports.

4/ Tried it with onboard audio disabled and enabled.

5/ Switched sata ports and cables. Then I tried the extra onboard Gigabyte sata controller.

6/ I even tried a different mouse and went as far as changing which outlets(?) I'm using on my modular power supply (grasping at straws, I know).

7/ Changed monitors.

I figured Ubuntu worked off the live CD so I'd try to install it even though I really don't want to use it. It freakin works! It installed and runs flawlessly as far as I can tell.

WTF?

Any clue as to what's going on? I'm at a loss.

[enaberif]

out of curiosity are you setting up your proper voltage, timings and speed for the memory?

[sswilson]

Did you turn off AHCI (or whatever the hell it's called) and set your drives for IDE mode?

Everything you've done still points to an OS issue, but it's now looking like something set in bios.

[FreqE1]

Yup, I've done that so many times now that I don't think I'll even try OCing for a few days after I get this working, Lol. If I get it working...

[FreqE1]

I'm doing all this with it set for IDE mode, no raid or AHCI

[enaberif]

got another video card or power supply?

[FreqE1]

I've tried with a GTS 512 and a HD 4850. I have the power supply in the comp I'm using now that I could switch out but if that was the problem would the Ubuntu install work?

[FreqE1]

I have a 2nd Windows CD do you think that might help? The CD I was using looks perfect but...

[CMetaphor]

If I may I'll try jumping in and lending some small advice (although you may have tried this already) even if windows installations are detecting your hard drives properly, have you tried specifying the sata drivers by hand using F6 at the beginning of the install? I've had issues like that before where the XP SP2/SP3 disk would detect the drive properly, but when it came time to actually install it would BSOD on me. Just my two cents