Incredible Instability in W2K 1

[originalxavier]

I am looking for suggestions because I only have about three hairs that I have not pulled out of my head.

I have a Dual AMD Opteron 244 system with 1GB of RAM on a Tyan K8W board, also known as the S2875. I have two (2) physical HDD; One at 30Gig's (OS only) and one at 120Gigs (all non-OS and non-Program installation files).

The actual problem:

I have an installation CD for W2K with NO SERVICE PACK on it. When I install this onto the system, I have no problems. HOWEVER, when I install SP2, SP3, and SP4, the OS Immediately fails once it is shut down to be restarted. I get an error when Windows is trying to load (at the countdown bar where you can enter the advanced options). The error message says it cannot load windows because it cannot find the WINNT/SYSTEM32/SOFTWARE file. There is one or two different files that it cannot find but mostly it is the software file.

The kicker:

I thought it may be the HDD controller on the MB. But the current setup WILL run Win XP Pro without any problems. Even with XP SP2 installed. I took the PC to where I purchased the components and was told that my second drive (for storage) was bad and that was affecting everything on the same IDE cable. "Buy a new drive." OK... But both HDD's ran W2K perfectly fine with the old PIII system board, CPU, and RAM. Just for fun, I tried disconnecting the second drive and leaving that off. Still the same problem.


I'm at my wits end. I have to have Windows 2000 because I have an older program that ONLY runs on W2K (I cannot afford the newer version that actually supports XP Pro). If I have to have W2K as the only OS, I would like to have the full functionality of a PC and cannot install media components to the PC because they render the system unstable.

ANY suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks for your contributions

Xavier

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"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far the Universe is winning"
Rick Cook
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[tazuk]

Just a thought, but have you considered creating a slipstreamed Windows 2000 disk with SP4 included and doing an install with that CD? There's a reasonable guide available here.

HTH

TazUk

Blue-screening PCs since 1998

 

[jimp56]

your system may be shutting down before the cache has time to flush. try disabling the write-behind cache on the HD (in device manager) to force windows to commit all cached data to disk prior to shutdown.

 

[wolluf]

As mentioned - slipstream might be an approach (certainly worth trying) - but it sounds like there's a conflict between something introduced in SP2-4 and your hardware.

Do you actually need to install the service pack(s)? (btw - you're not actually installing SP2 then 3 then 4 - you are just installing SP4?). You are sure it runs ok with no service pack (ie, you have run it for a decent length of time like that?).

 

[G0AOZ]

Check that your Tyan board has an up-to-date BIOS. I don't get many of these boards, but always seem to have to update the BIOS...

ROGER - G0AOZ.