Anyone ever had XP not complete a fresh install?

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 2:59 pm

This is really strange. I've never run into this before. I have an Asus mobo, model P5NSLI (http://www.asus.com/Motherboard/P5NSLI/ ... Knowledge). I'm able to install Win7 with no issues, but on XP, it will hang when it says "starting windows" and never goes beyond that point. If I press the power button to shut down, I get a blue screen of death, so I'm sure it's some hardware related issue.

The board has the latest version of the bios installed. It has fresh 2 gigs of ram that I bought at Crucial. The memory test okay with MemTest.

Tried 2 different hard drives. One was a PATA and the other was a SATA. Both hang at the same spot mentioned above.

Tried 2 different XP install disks with the same issue.

I did a gogle search and did not come up with anything for installing xp on this board. On a side note, that chipset sure does get HOT! Holly cow. I ended up using a fan to blow on it, as I could not leave my finger on the heat sink.

Err · Post by **Err** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:21 pm

Check your bios settings for the memory timings and voltage. Make sure they match that on the RAM. The NVidia chipsets, in my experience, are picky about how the memory is set.

Yes these chipsets get very hot. I had a gigabyte LGA 775 board fail for this reason. I put an aftermarket heatsink on the 680i LT board I have.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:25 pm

You might try pulling any unnecessary cards too.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:23 am

Only card is a video card.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Tue Feb 26, 2013 12:48 am

Is this before or after you install any drivers? At this point, that would be my number one guess. Might have to do some slipstreaming.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Tue Feb 26, 2013 11:58 am

What Service Pack version of XP? Pre-SP2 did not have a full set of chipset and SATA drivers and would do that. You need to install off an SP2 or better yet an SP3 CD, or create a slipstream version.

Most likely it's the SATA driver, so the other thing that might work if you haven't done it yet, get the floppy based SATA drivers from the mobo's website (yes you'll need to temporarily connect a floppy either ribbon or USB since the XP installer can't pull drivers from anywhere else), boot the installer and press F6 when prompted to install the SATA drivers from the floppy.

Another option would be to go into BIOS and change the SATA controller mode from ACHI to IDE (or it might be called IDE or ATA emulation). The controller will pretend to be a standard IDE controller that XP will recognize. Small performance hit, but nothing major.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Tue Feb 26, 2013 2:46 pm

Yeah I did the F6 option with a floppy, and I'm using a SP2 version. Might try a SP3 version that I have laying round. Probably explains why win7 installs with no issues.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 12:54 am

Still having issues. I tried just about everything, but I decided to look closely at the BSOD. At the bottom, it referred to "acpi.sys". I could not disable it or to change it in the BIOS. There simply was no option on this board; however, some googling suggested pressing F7 when you see the prompt to press F6 so I did and now it goes past that into the actual setup. I'm going to try and install it tomorrow when I have more time.

b-man1 · Post by **b-man1** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 6:49 am

Executioner wrote:Still having issues. I tried just about everything, but I decided to look closely at the BSOD. At the bottom, it referred to "acpi.sys". I could not disable it or to change it in the BIOS. There simply was no option on this board; however, some googling suggested pressing F7 when you see the prompt to press F6 so I did and now it goes past that into the actual setup. I'm going to try and install it tomorrow when I have more time.

good call. i never had to deal with many install problems beyond bad CD media or F6 for drivers. i just found this MS article which explains all of the setup key options (XP through Server 2003 it looks like):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/295116

During Setup, you can use various function keys to activate certain features and commands. The following list details the current functions keys, what they do, and when you can use them.

Three keys can be used when Setup is loading and when you are prompted to press the F6 function key to install third-party small computer system interface (SCSI) and host controller drivers:

F5 - For computer type or hardware abstraction layer (HAL) selection
F6 - To install third-party SCSI and host controller drivers
F7 - To run Setup without Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)

When the "Welcome to Setup" screen is displayed, the following function keys can be used:

F2 - To automatically start the Automated System Recovery (ASR) process.
F10 - To bypass the menu screens and to load the Recovery Console

During graphical user interface (GUI)-Mode Setup, the following function keys can be used:

SHIFT+F10 - To enable access to a command prompt during GUI-Mode Setup
SHIFT+F11 - To display "old-style" wizards that give more detail

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 8:41 am

Without ACPI you will lose some power management: CPU throttling via the OS, sleep mode, and Windows may be unable to shut off the PC when you click the Shutdown button (you'll get the old Win NT "It is now safe to turn off your computer" message instead).

Yeah, I guess that's the issue with an older OS like XP - the installer doesn't natively support the new ACPI spec.

You MAY get ACPI back after installing the mobo driver which should be the first driver you install, but the problem is that USUALLY WinXP is locked into one ACPI mode or another after the initial install.

And thanks for that F7 tip - didn't know about that.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:14 pm

Here are the options for this board:

2.5
Power menu
The Power menu items allow you to change the settings for the Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) and the Advanced Power
Management (APM). Select an item then press <Enter> to display the
configuration options.

2.5.1
ACPI Suspend Type [S1&S3]
Allows you to select the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
(ACPI) state to be used for system suspend.
Configuration options: [S1 (POS)] [S3(STR)] [S1&S3]
2.5.2
ACPI APIC Support [Enabled]
Allows you to enable or disable the Advanced Configuration and Power
Interface (ACPI) support in the Application-Specific Integrated Circuit
(ASIC). When set to Enabled, the ACPI APIC table pointer is included in the
RSDT pointer list. Configuration options: [Disabled] [Enabled]

I could try either SI or S3 by themselves and see if that makes a difference, or simply disable the second option ACPI support, but then like FP mentioned, you have to turn the PC off manually. My goal is to have XP installed so I can sell this PC. Yeah it works with win7, but I have legit copies of XP to go with it.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:25 pm

Doh, I hadn't considered power management. But then again, I haven't installed XP on a modern machine. S3 should be just fine for XP. I'm not sure that APIC is supported by XP.

Executioner · Post by **Executioner** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:58 pm

I got it installed, and it defaulted to indicating only one processor when I have 2. I was able to double click on it and install the multiprocessor selection. Had to reboot twice and now that works, but the PC won't auto shut-off when I tell it to quit. From my reading, APIC is supported by XP, but you have to be using service pack 2. Hard to believe that Asus does not have a fix for this, as I could not find any discussions about this issue.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:50 pm

It's REALLY hard to change this after an install. At install time your PC is either setup for it or not and I have not ever found a reliable way of changing it later.

Only thing that might work is to slipstream the mobo driver into an XP service pack 3 installer ISO, so that the mobo driver is installed during the installation.

normalicy · Post by **normalicy** » Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:55 pm

Agreed, you need to re-install windows.