After having windows vista installed for a few months I decided to go back to XP . I formatted the hard drive with the windows xp disk, It formatted then did the first restart. It got past the post screen and asked if you wanted to boot from cdrom it then froze and displayed strange characters and blocks of colour. I've just reset the bios. It now gets to the point just before the boot from cdrom and freezes and some of the characters disapear from the screen
Unkown Crash
- Thread starter jcs1987
- Start date
ati radeon x1900GT
intel dual core 1.86GHZ allendale
Gigabyte Motherboard - GA-965P-DS3
Corsair 1 GB memory (DDR2- 2x512) value select PC5300.
Netgear wireless adapter.
250 GB sata hard drive + 80 GB sata hard drive
(had problems with 80GB drive clicking before. sent it to be checked and the same one came back, still clicking from time to time
intel dual core 1.86GHZ allendale
Gigabyte Motherboard - GA-965P-DS3
Corsair 1 GB memory (DDR2- 2x512) value select PC5300.
Netgear wireless adapter.
250 GB sata hard drive + 80 GB sata hard drive
(had problems with 80GB drive clicking before. sent it to be checked and the same one came back, still clicking from time to time
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im trying to install it on an 80gb maxtor diamond sata drive but we can only get as far as the first restart after the format it wont load windows at all
its not the hardrives ive just upluged them in turn and started the pc and its made no difference
its not the hardrives ive just upluged them in turn and started the pc and its made no difference
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Exactly the same problem here with a 1950XT.
With my windows setup CD in the drive, I can boot to the 'boot from CD' screen. Then I get about 5 or 6 blocks of colours on the screen in a diagonal direction. Nothing then responds.
If I boot from a drive with windows already installed (I have 2 drives) the PC continuously reboots after displaying the logon screen and a blue screen of death for 3-4 seconds. Same issue when booting into Safe Mode.
I really hope this is not a graphics card problem as I've only had my card for 3-4 months.
Now then this is the part that has me confused. This problem only started the moment I tried to install the Alcohol CD writer software. Towards the end of the installation I was prompted to install an 'Unknown Device Driver'. I clicked yes assuming this was referring to the virtual drive. wham I get a blue screen and then the problems above start occurring.
I've checked everything is fully connected on the motherboard and even tried removing and re-inserting memory sticks, drives and CPU.
With my windows setup CD in the drive, I can boot to the 'boot from CD' screen. Then I get about 5 or 6 blocks of colours on the screen in a diagonal direction. Nothing then responds.
If I boot from a drive with windows already installed (I have 2 drives) the PC continuously reboots after displaying the logon screen and a blue screen of death for 3-4 seconds. Same issue when booting into Safe Mode.
I really hope this is not a graphics card problem as I've only had my card for 3-4 months.
Now then this is the part that has me confused. This problem only started the moment I tried to install the Alcohol CD writer software. Towards the end of the installation I was prompted to install an 'Unknown Device Driver'. I clicked yes assuming this was referring to the virtual drive. wham I get a blue screen and then the problems above start occurring.
I've checked everything is fully connected on the motherboard and even tried removing and re-inserting memory sticks, drives and CPU.
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Try reinstalling the graphics card and give the pins a good clean, and make sure nothing is stuck in the PCI-E slot.
I got strange graphics corruption and sometimes fail boot before I took the GFX card out and realised there was some random **** stuck in the slot. Now everything is perfectly fine.
I got strange graphics corruption and sometimes fail boot before I took the GFX card out and realised there was some random **** stuck in the slot. Now everything is perfectly fine.
Update to my problem noted above, plus a strange solution that worked.
Graphics card is fine, as are the hard disks. My windows installation had become corrupt, as I tested the Hard Drive in another PC and still had the PC reboot.
Okay then onto my attempts at booting from a CD. As I mentioned the PC would lock up and I'd get a few coloured pixels accross the screen. As recomended I removed and refitted my Graphics card, but same problem.
I can't guarentee this is a fix, but how I managed to get the PC to boot from a CD without locking up (strange colours) was to enable the USB Keyboard setting in the BIOS. By default this was set to disable.
When disabled PC would crash when attempting to boot from CD
When enabled I clicked 'any key' as advised and things worked as they should.
Plugged in an older PS2 keyboard to test and had no problems eitherway.
5-6 hours later I've re-installed all my apps and games without any further problems.
Not sure this will help jcs1987, as you may not even be using a USB keyboard, but hopefully you are and you get things sorted too.
Graphics card is fine, as are the hard disks. My windows installation had become corrupt, as I tested the Hard Drive in another PC and still had the PC reboot.
Okay then onto my attempts at booting from a CD. As I mentioned the PC would lock up and I'd get a few coloured pixels accross the screen. As recomended I removed and refitted my Graphics card, but same problem.
I can't guarentee this is a fix, but how I managed to get the PC to boot from a CD without locking up (strange colours) was to enable the USB Keyboard setting in the BIOS. By default this was set to disable.
When disabled PC would crash when attempting to boot from CD
When enabled I clicked 'any key' as advised and things worked as they should.
Plugged in an older PS2 keyboard to test and had no problems eitherway.
5-6 hours later I've re-installed all my apps and games without any further problems.
Not sure this will help jcs1987, as you may not even be using a USB keyboard, but hopefully you are and you get things sorted too.