Okay wow... been working on this for a loooong time. Time to consult the forums! Here's the situation:

Got a new motherboard for X-Mas. Had Windows XP Pro isntalled on my HDD, and attempted to switch my mobo's (Asus P4S8X-X to an Asus P4P800). But when I booted for the first time with my new mobo, WinXP got to the loading screen, and rebooted the computer. So I tinkered with partitioning and reformatting (after backing up my files onto another computer of course), and still nothing. Even after I managed to reformat, WinXP still came up to load, and the computer still rebooted. So I said **** it, I'll just buy a new HDD. So I went out and bought a brand spankin' new Seagate 160GB Serial ATA. I setup the BIOS correctly to read the new HDD, but when I boot into DOS using Win98SE bootdisk, I cannot see the hard drive!!! THAT is problem number 1. Problem number 2 is a result of problem number 1. And that is whenever I attempt to load an OS onto my drive, my computer freezes. I created the crazy 6 floppies for WinXP Pro, and when they finished, I hit "Enter" to start setup, and my computer froze. So I went through the 6 floppy setup AGAIN, and pressed "r" for Recovery Console. That too, froze up. Then I said the heck with XP, I'll use Linux. I created the 3 CD's for the new Fedora core, and booted from the first CD. Everything seemed to be going fine, and it saw the Host Adapter for the hard drive. It then came to a white screen with a little purple mouse cursor. I thought "Awesome! It's going to load Linux!" Wrong again. It froze. Again. I NEED HELP! $10 via Snail Mail to the person who provides the winning solution! I'm desperate! Thank you in advance for your replies.

Have you checked out your RAM? memtest86

Hi did you partition the drive and set a active partition? you also might have to enter the bios setup and turn off anti virus if it has it.

You wont see a SATA with a win 98 boot disk (I dont think anyway) and may not even see it in the BIOS. That board will only support SATA with XP-
http://usa.asus.com/prog/spec.asp?m=P4P800&langs=09

A clean install of XP FROM THE CD during which install the RAID drivers when prompted. It's little and at the very bottom of the screen but it is there early on in the install.

Since ASUS support sucks, I buy Intel stuff and don't have these issues :)

Seriously though, you may need to get Intel RAID drivers as all I could find from ASUS was an Intel application accelerator RAID edition (whatever the heck that is supposed to be). The Intel boards have two seoerate applications, a RAID driver (that is supplied with the board) and the application accelerator (which is also supplied). This must be an ASUS "combo" edition I am guessing.

http://www.asus.com/support/download/selectftp.aspx?l1_id=1&l2_id=15&l3_id=19&m_id=2&f_name=iaa35r.zip~zaqwedc

Jimi_l

To anon: I will check memtest tomorrow morning. Thank you.

To TopFarmer: Yes I did partition the drive with the Seagate CD supplied with the new HDD. (Although it did seem kind of weird when it took less than 3 seconds to partition an NTFS file system to a 160GB HDD)

To Jimi_1: I cannot start a clean install of XP from the CD because of this error message: "NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart." at boot. And if I use the 6 floppies, it freezes when I press "enter" to install Windows. And about the RAID accelerator from Asus' website, I will try that along with the memory test tomorrow morning. Thank you for that suggestion.

Any other suggestions anyone?!

I am voting for it being a memory problem too, but double check your BIOS Setup for the video adapter card and make sure the options match what the video adapter supports, and that it is still working. The point you are reaching is about the point where the OS would first try to switch the display for text and low resolution graphics modes into the higher screen resolution used by the Desktop, and start using the graphics accelerator features. Might be worth trying a different video adapter if you have one.

Use the six setup floppies for XP.
At the begining of setup at the bottom of the screen you will be prompted to hit F6 to load third party RAID drivers.
You need to press F6 at this time.
Setup will continue on to a certain point and then you will be prompted to load the RAID drivers for your motherboard.
You will need to have these driver on a floppy.
So you will need to browse your motherboard CD and locate the drivers on the CD and then copy then to a floppy and have them ready for setup.

Good Luck.

Good Jezus, and folks want to know why I use Me. Is everyone saying you just can't stick the XP cd in and have it load? Can't you change a motherboard and load the chipset drivers and have a working system? Shouldn't this be pretty simple?

What did I miss here?

Skip

So, I'm also thinking the problem is hardware. If it's hard to diagnose, don't worry...memory problems often are.

Skip

Forgot to mention...

Send the 10 bucks to anonproxy; he's first and likely correct.

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1) Win98SE cannot read your "large" drive.
2) P4P800 Bios is a pain to set, carefully recheck every entry/option/selection.
3) P4P800 uses Via driver.

Finally, my P4P800 is sitting in my drawer instead of in the tower. The darn CPU temp after 800 mhz overclocked read 38-41C load and 22C system when my room temp was 23C. I am now running two IC7 and one IS7.

I am thinking of fooling other by bragging my overclocked temps; what could be better than using P4P800. I wrote to Asus and told them people to get to work.

NTLDR message does not appear on a clean install. If you are pulling that error then you are trying an upgrade or reinstall.

Have you tried running the Seagate install floppy disk? You can even make a bootable CD with that software.

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

Jimi_l
Jimi_l

Hey,

It seems that you have a conflict of some kind with one or more hardware you use, this is easyly seen by what you said about xp resetting durin startup. Chances are, it could be the ram, imean you wouldent balieve how many ppl have trouble with ram in the workshop theese days! like anonproxy said, you best check the ram.

Also check you'r settings in the bios thoroughly bus speeds an all since the configuration in here can determine the way you'r boards going to 'act'. Try turning the AGP8x down too.

Luck!

Update: I created the MemTest86 bootdisk, and it works for about 1 second. Then, like everything else, it reboots the computer.

As for the VIA drivers, I found them on the motherboard CD, but I can't boot from that CD. So I put the driver on a floppy, like Dave02 told me to do. But when I pressed F6 to install Third Part RAID Drivers, nothing came up. The setup process just kept going! :( I'm running out of things to try people!!!

Another update: (I know, I'm spending ALOT of time on this...)

here's another thing i tired: I created a DOS 7.10 bootdisk and went to my C: (my CDROM drive) and popped in the WindowsXP Pro CD. I changed directory to i386, and ran "winnt". The following is what is immediatly displayed:

"An internal setup has occured.
Cuold not find a place for a swap file.
Setup cannot continue. Press F3 to exit."

BAH! Anyway, I'm beginning to agree more and more with anonproxy, and everyone else with the memory thing. Whenever I run MemTest86, it runs for 1 second, and reboots the computer. Does anyone have any suggestions on what type of RAM I should buy for a P4P800?

Also, I have an ATi Radeon9800 Pro (256MB). The only two settings even relavant to video settings in the BIOS are the AGP/PCI or PCI/AGP, and the aperture size (which I have set for 64MB for safety).

And as for the Seagate CD, I can boot from that, but when I attempt to partition it, it partitions fine. HOWEVER, it only takes approx. 3 seconds to do so, which I find VERY odd.

Hm, what else have I tried so far...

Oh yeah, I cannot boot from the motherboard CD either. It gives me the "NTLDR is missing" thing when I try to boot from the CD. And yes, the boot priority was correct. So how am I supposed to install the VIA RAID drivers???

Ah yes, one last thing about my BIOS... there is this weird configuration in the IDE Configuration submenu... It asks you whether you want to use "Compatible Mode" or "Enhanced Mode". I can see all of my drives in BIOS in either setting, however, in MSDOS, I can only see my CDROM drive if I have it set to Compatible Mode. Strange. And also, whenever I get into DOS to partition my HDD, DOS doesnt see my HDD at all, so there is no way to partition it, or format it for that matter.

AAAAHHHH!!! HELP!!!

Since you run memtest86 directly from the floppy anyway, why not disconnect everything except the CPU, memory, video, & floppy drive...then run memtest? Do you have any other RAM that you can try?

long shot see if there is a bios update for motherboard.

Here are my instructions again for loading the third party RAID drivers.
Try doing it again.
Setup will continue, then near the end of setup, you will be given the option to install the RAID drivers.

Use the six setup floppies for XP.
At the begining of setup at the bottom of the screen you will be prompted to hit F6 to load third party RAID drivers.
You need to press F6 at this time.
Setup will continue on to a certain point and then you will be prompted to load the RAID drivers for your motherboard.
You will need to have these driver on a floppy.
So you will need to browse your motherboard CD and locate the drivers on the CD and then copy then to a floppy and have them ready for setup.

Dave02, I already tried pressing F6 several times. Nothing happens when I do, and so I can't install the third party RAID drivers... :(

I'm thinking about changing to my old motherboard again, and then reinstalling my old hard drive. My new hard drive is a serial ata, and isnt supported by my older motherboard, however I do have a Serial ATA PCI card that I will be able to install. I just don't like the fact that I won't be able to install my new motherboard. :(

Any other suggestions people? Before I revert to my old motherboard?! Thanks alot for all your help already.

Hello.
Ok I'm don't understand which one problem you have with your computer but I try to help. 1)Check for motherboard COMPATIBILITY. 2)check all jamper setting's on hd and cdrom if available. Try to put master hd with o/s. 3) In bios check firs boot device flp dr second cd-rom drive and next one is hd. enable or disable antivarus properties in bios. This is all for a first step to make you computer show sumthing from windows o/s.

Unplug everything in your computer except for video card and ram, maybe floppy...

also make sure your anti-virus bios protection is set to off (also that your HDs jumpers are set in primary master and it is plugged in that way) no cdroms, no nothing just to see if you can boot on the win98 bootdisk....

if this stuff still doesn't work you might have a overheating problem if it crashes randomly... make sure the fan on top of your cpu is plugged in and running properly

If you do a absolute clean install of everything boot on your win98 floppy and type format C: /s (or whatever letter your HD is)... then go to your cdrom and load 98 or XP from there