OMG HELP please

[terminaldawn]

Ok. I am going nuts here. I thought i knew what I was doing but maybe i do not. I have spending way too much time on this issue. I have a Compaq Deskpro EP series. And a brand new western digital 20 gig ata 100 HD. I am unable to format the drive with NTFS with windows 2000 pro, howver i can put a fat partition on fine. I have tried first putting fat on the drive, also trying different cables. I am using a ultra ata/66 cable. I think maybe this is a calbing issue perhaps. (I dont completely understand what cable i should be using for a particular dirve, and if someone could give me a good refernce point for this it would be appreciated. I tried a different ultra ATA Maxtor drive and it did the same thing. The bios does detect the drive and I have the most up to date bios on the MOBO. Oh another thing i have tried is to swith between cable select and master and making sure the hd is alone and on the primary ouput of the cable. ANy ideas would be appreciate. please help

 

[smah]

Many Western Digitals need to have a certain jumper setting when they are the only drive on a cable. This setting is not, master, slave or cable select. They call it single drive configuration or something like that. There's a diagram on the web site if there's nothing on the drive label, but I believe for this configuration, the jumper should be horizontal, near the middle of the top row of pins - I just can't remember exactly which ones.

 

[Enkrypted]

Actually for most Western Digital drives, if you are just hooking that drive by itself, removing the jumper all together will work. Although after reading your post, the only thing you stated was that you could not load a NTFS partition to install Windows 2000 on. What type of problems are you having with this? Are you receiving any error messages? Does the system stop responding? You weren't really too clear with your post. You also state "I am unable to format the drive with NTFS with windows 2000 pro, howver i can put a fat partition on fine. I have tried first putting fat on the drive, also trying different cables."Were you able or not to get the FAT partition to install? Please repost with a little bit more detail on the exact problems you are getting. Enkrypted
A+

 

[terminaldawn]

during the windows 2000 pro set-up when copying files it randomly says that files are not being copid correctly. "the file setup placed on your hard drive is not a valied wondows 2000 system image." I have tried multiple cd's I know that the cds all work. To test i have used the cd to install on a different pc and that worked fine. Also i have tried a different cdrom drive as well. This pc was working fine with a fresh copy of windows 2000 on it and i noticed that the hard drive was ready to go. SO i decide to replace the hard drive and now i cant get win 2000 back on the system.

 

[henrykohnen]

Hi, first of all I'm from Argentina, so you'll have to forgive my english
I'm having the same problem: I'm trying to install Windows 2000 Professional (English Edition).
There's no problem on creating, deleting and formatting partitions in NTFS. But when it starts copying files, randomly says the following:

"The file xxxxxx.xxx was not copied correctly.
The file Setup placed on your hard drive is not a valid Windows 2000 system image. If you are installing from a CD, there may be a problem with the Windows 2000 CD.
* To retry, press ENTER.
If you continue to receive this message, contact your Windows 2000 supplier or system administrator.
* To skip this file, press ESC.
CAUTION: if you skip this file, Setup may not complete and Windows 2000 may not work properly.
* To quit Setup, press F3."

I've tried both options: retry and skip. Sometimes, retrying works, but after it boots, when it should show me the Setup screen it gives me an error. I'm suer this is the reason.

I've also tried switching disks, CD-ROMs and Windows 2000 CDs (they work fine in other machines), but it remains... I'm starting to think it could be a motherboard problem. It's a SY-6VBA133 with a 700 MHz Pentium III Processor.

Thanks in advance!

Hernan

 

[apex1x]

Try replacing your IDE cables connecting your hard drive to the motherboard. If you can understand it, you probably don't.

 

[terminaldawn]

I solved my problem. WHat it was for me was bad memory. I would try that. Also did you try a different disk?

 

[DavidSnell]

Just a heads up. We have had this problem in the past and it has ALWAYS been for 1 of 2 particular reasons.

1: It is either failing RAM or
2: A failing hard drive.

Don't think for a minute that because the components are "Brand New" that they cannot fail.

We always swap out the memory first and if that doesn't work we swap hard drives. Hope this helps.

 

[terminaldawn]

David - I wish you were watching this post when i first started it a month ago. Would have saved me a huge headache : )

 

[apex1x]

Just to add, remember to check your IDE connections and or cables. Often this can fix what first appears as a bad hard drive (intermittent hard drive errors).

So add that as # 3 If you can understand it, you probably don't.

 

[henrykohnen]

Well, thanks to you all.

It seems it was a memory problem. But it's weird: I swap the 128 MB module with another 128 MB module (which I was using), and it worked. I put the "failed" module in other PC and works fine.

IT things... =)

Hernan

 

[wolluf]

memory compatibility is unpredictable (with other memory & with motherboards).