Help! Unbootable new computer!
- Thread starter Ease
- Start date
I would guess the USB drive doesnt present a siginficant load power wise, so booting from that is probably a bit of a false positive. Saying that, sounds like your Ram is fine if SLAX is OK. Smells like a power issue to me. Perhaps try getting some sort of OS onto the HDD using the USB stick as your installation media, and see if it plays ball.
Well at least that is some festive progress!
If it's an old DVD drive then it may have detected the wrong speed setting (interface). Most are ATA-33 / UDMA 2. It will slow it down but you could try setting it to PIO mode, that may help you get running.
Also as per the above post, check you don't have raid enabled in the BIOS.
Not forgetting the usual... make sure the DVD drive is set to master and is the pluged into the furthest connector on the ribbon cable.
AD
If it's an old DVD drive then it may have detected the wrong speed setting (interface). Most are ATA-33 / UDMA 2. It will slow it down but you could try setting it to PIO mode, that may help you get running.
Also as per the above post, check you don't have raid enabled in the BIOS.
Not forgetting the usual... make sure the DVD drive is set to master and is the pluged into the furthest connector on the ribbon cable.
AD
Its saying my Hard Drive doesn't contain a valid partition table, but I've never used Linux before so I have no idea how to make a valid partition table! Found Memtest86 on my SLAX, so I'm running that, and so far it all looks fine. Could an unpartitioned HD be the problem?
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Alrighty; I just played with fdisk and mkfs and stuff like that, figuring that at worse my computer still didn't work... ha ha. Anywho, after all that I then borrowed a friend's DVD drive (which is so bust up it doesn't even open without a LOT of force) and tried my WinXP disk again.
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SETUP RAN! And is now formatting my hard drive to NTFS! I wish I knew whether it was the new DVD Drive or the random mkfs and fdisk'ing I did, but if this actually works and I can actually use my computer like a proper P.C this is going to be the best day of the year for me! Christmas won't/can't even compare!
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SETUP RAN! And is now formatting my hard drive to NTFS! I wish I knew whether it was the new DVD Drive or the random mkfs and fdisk'ing I did, but if this actually works and I can actually use my computer like a proper P.C this is going to be the best day of the year for me! Christmas won't/can't even compare!
The HD partition wont make any difference with regards to the original problem. Ubuntu or Fedora arent any good to you as you want to rule out the optical drive.
XP can automatically partition the drive so there should be no issues with an unpartitioned HDD, the install application loads to memory so will load even without a HDD connected .... have the tee shirt for that one
Looks like your DVD.... happily the cheapest option... treat yourself ... will just not a good time for deliveries!
AD
Ok, to all who helped me, I wish you the best Karma in the world. You all rock, so much! It's now up and running, and I am so happy! Only 13 hours after I started building my P.C! He he, weirdly enough my own DVD Drive is now working fine and installing Black and White 2 (I'm soon to get a job with Lionhead Studios so need to do some research!) - so everything is giggidy! Thank you all so much! I can't say thank you enough!
<Edit>Now at 3.20 GHz... mmmmm..</edit>
<Edit>Now at 3.20 GHz... mmmmm..</edit>
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