PLEASE: Help Installing OS

Raeder · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jan 2006 Posts: 2

I first tried to install my OS on a 20G partition and I also set up a 300G extended partition for anything else I might want to install. Everything installed and loaded like it should have, but when I went to install a game, the system was acting like it wanted to install on the initial partition. I could not figure out how to fix my problem. I ran setup again, and formatted the entire hard disk into one partition. Everything was running smoothly, setup was copying a series of files, and then asked to restart saying that it would continue with setup after the reboot. After my system had successfully rebooted and had finished the power on self test, i press F1 to continue, and then it lists any connections i have and asks if i want to boot from CD. Then it acts like it doesn't recognize my keyboard, and then my prompt says "Press any key to boot from CD....." After about 5 seconds, my screen goes black and does not do anything after.... I can hear my CD drive working.

HELP!!!

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 17:37:45 Post Subject:

Hi, and welcome.

Sounds like you went overboard just for a game to install in a different location... should have been an easy enough thing to point it to your new partition (assuming it was formatted and a drive letter assigned at that point).

So, now... Is the OS fully re-installed? If so, remove the CD from the drive and see if it boots right up into Windows. If it is done installing, you shouldn't need the disk, and it is probably just getting confused since a disk is present and the CD drive is obviously at the top of the boot priority list.

Hope this makes sense... Let us know!

Wave

Raeder · Rated PG Joined: 25 Jan 2006 Posts: 2

I have tried taking the CD out and booting from there, it does everything the exact same way only it doesnt even ask me to boot from CD, just goes to a black screen... Sad

Kilamon · Rated XXX Joined: 22 Mar 2005 Posts: 811

could be a faulty hard drive, poor cdrom, bad cable or bad motherboard. Try the simple stuff, first. Replace the cable from the motherboard to the hard drive and check all your other connections at the same time.

Is this a SATA, MFM or some other hard drive? What model/make? What's your motherboard? Cdrom? What was the last thing you did to the system before formatting it? Why did you want to repartition and/or format originally?

Blue|Fusion · Posted: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 11:50:31 Post Subject:

Youd don't have to really replace anything to test it. If you can on another computer, download a linux LiveCD such as Knoppix or Whoppix. Put it in the pc you're having trouble with, and it runs off of the RAM with ramdisks, not your harddrive. You can download smartmontools from sourceforge and compile and install. Once done, you can test your harddrive's S.M.A.R.T. data and run short and long drive tests. This can detect problems with your harddrive, but not necissarily the cable (although some do show up as DMA errors in SMART). You will come to realize it is a cable issue if there are no SMART errors, but having trouble with the drive regardless. If you do replace the cable and it's still not working properly, it's a problem probobly with your motherboard.