Help a newbie with XP installation

harker · Post by **harker** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 7:08 pm

what bios are you using?......check bottom of screen as it boots...is it RU?

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Mon Apr 28, 2003 7:41 pm

It looks like your CDROM is connected to the standard IDE controller. True? Is the hard drive connected to the HPT366 controller? Or...?

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Tue Apr 29, 2003 5:21 pm

The 1.22 BIOS number looks like the HPT366 BIOS revision number. The BP6 BIOS is shown at the bottom left-hand side of the BIOS startup screen. There are two text messages. At the end the of the second text message, you will see two characters. LP, NJ, QQ or RU. Which one do you see?

If you need to, you can press BREAK key on the keyboard to halt the boot process. Press Break again, when you are ready to continue.

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Tue May 06, 2003 1:55 am

So you have attached the HDs and two CD drives to the standard onboard IDE (the two lower ports, if your board is in a tower case, black) and the third CD is on the HPT 366 (upper, white ports), right?

topaz, the drives on the HPt366 aren´t listed in the main board BIOS, that´s right. But of course XP should "see" them.

Do you use a 80-wire / UDMA66 cable for that third CD? The blue plug has to be connected to the mainboard.

Is the drive jumpered as master or slave? The master should be at the end of those cables and the slave in the middle.

Try to change the master/slave jumper. I have a Pioneer DVD that doesn´t like to be slave and only works as master (proud drive, I guess;))

Best regards,

Wolfram

Post by **Derek** » Tue May 06, 2003 9:06 am

Wolfram wrote:topaz, the drives on the HPt366 aren´t listed in the main board BIOS, that´s right. But of course XP should "see" them.

That is a very good point!

Something else to be aware of is if the drives are connected to the regular IDE ports they must be recognized in the BIOS to be able to function. You can always set drive detection to “AUTO”, and then save the settings once they’ve been detected to save boot-up time.

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Wed May 07, 2003 12:57 pm

topaz wrote:is it possible the upgreade that allows the 544 processorrs does not support the third and fourth ide drivers?

What upgrade? If you have a processor running at 544, it´should be a usual Celeron (A) or a PIII with Katmai core- no modifications necessary, these are the standard cpus for the BP6.

If it´s not your CD drive´s configuration (or maybe a broken 80-wire cable), there might still be something wrong with the HPT366 driver installation in XP. Is the HPT366 shown in the device manager, without question- or exclamation mark? If it´s not a driver issue, it might be the HPT366 hardware. Or faulty capacitors on the board (you will come across this sooner or later as a BP6 owner... hope you will only READ about it;))

hyperspace · Post by **hyperspace** » Fri May 09, 2003 6:49 am

True, Home only supports one processor. Pro will support two.

Back to XP seeing the CDROM...

The HPT366 controller shows up under the SCSI section of the Device Manager. There should be two HPT366 devices listed if the drivers are functioning properly. Are you seeing the HPT366 devices under the SCSI section?

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Tue May 13, 2003 2:12 am

First, I would unplug the third CD that caused problems before and see what happens. It´s the only device on the HPT366, right?

LBA ist enabled for your harddisks in the BIOS? Both recognized correctly? (via "auto" setting?)

I have encountered this error when my harddrive or floppy configuration was wrong. But sometimes it seems to occur without any obvious reason. Your hd partitions and master/slave settings should be ok, since WinXP worked before, right? Since you can boot from floppy, it shouldn´t be the floppy configuration.

I got this from http://www.biosupgrade.co.uk/support_dmi.htm :

Constantly Verifying / Hanging on DMI POOL
The BIOS upgrade is unable to correctly initialise all the DMI address.
1) Clear CMOS via jumper
2) Press <DEL> when prompted to enter the BIOS SETUP
3) Enter the PnP/PCI Configuration Menu
4) Ensure PnP OS Installed is set to "YES"
1) Ensure Reset Configuration Data is set to "Enabled"
2) Save changes and exit
3) Reboot the PC
4) Ensure that all devices are detected by the BIOS

If not Remove all add in cards except the video card
Repeat steps 1-7
Add the cards back in singly until the BIOS detects all the cards and the DMI error disappears

Note that Derek pointed out here that this may very well be a problem with the operating system, in your case: WinXP, since the DMI message is the last before the OS boots. So the OS may hang without giving an error message.

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Mon May 19, 2003 6:49 am

I´d try to clear the CMOS like I described above.

If that doesn´t work, I would unplug everything but one CD and one harddrive, re-partition and reformat that drive and install the OS. But I still guess there´s something wrong with your harddrive configuration. Can you boot from CDROM now or can´t you?

Your harddrive or IDE controller might be broken, but I think it´s unlikely. I assume you´ve already checked the capacitors on the board?

Wolfram · Post by **Wolfram** » Tue May 20, 2003 3:20 pm

There is a jumper close to the battery on the board, that´s the CMOS jumper. Unplug the power supply, set the jumper to the other position for a few seconds, put it back into the original position, connect the PSU again and boot.

The capacitor should have flat, not: bulky tops. Defective caps sometimes leak- a fluid comes from their bottoms. Pictures of bad capacitors: http://home.att.net/~garyheadlee/images.htm

iSDn · Post by **iSDn** » Thu May 22, 2003 4:09 am

No, this can't be the error...you have to activate/register it yourself after the installation. So you can install and use an already activated WinXP for 14 days.