Unable to install Windows 2000 Server on dual CPU 7DPXDW+
 

Having problems installing Windows 2000 Server in a new system built as
follows:

Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+ motherboard
Two Athlon MP2800+ boxed (i.e. using their own heatsink)
Yamaha CD-RW (can find out model if important)
13GB ATA-100 HDD (ditto with model)
4 x 512MB DDR PC2100 266MHz 184pin (2GB total)
Antec True Power PSU (lots of power)
13GB HDD & CD-RW connected to IDE-3 as master & slave (will be using IDE-1
for RAID later)

Problems:

1) Motherboard didn't recognise MP2800+ so W2K thought on one CPU. Upgraded
BIOS to F5 which resolved this

2) System sometimes hangs during the POST after using ALT-CTRL-DEL (soft)
reboot. Hard reset solves it but not nice!

3) After reboot the registry becomes corrupt - suspect big IDE cache bug in
W2K so trying W2K+SP4

4) W2K Server install progresses fine until detecting hardware when
following errors are generated:

a) Windows could not load the install for CDROM. Contact your hard vendor
for assistance
b) Connot load MPU401. The driver file may be missing. Try installing the
driver again or contact your system administrator
c) Windows count not load the installer for Battery. Contact your vendor for
assistance

After Windows 2000 server boots up, tries to install Yamaha CD driver (which
has never needed a driver!) and also has failed to install Windows network
client. Manually attempting to install Windows client fails with error about
unable to find the file. There are also many unresolved entries in the
device manager which don't install cleanly...

Bit of a dogs dinner really...

Any ideas anyone? Wondered about RAM but thought it unlikely it would fall
at the same place everytime (have tried install 5 or 6 times so far).
Suspected CD so swapped that with no effect.

Cheers, Rob.

"Rob Nicholson" wrote in message
...
Having problems installing Windows 2000 Server in a new system built as
follows:

Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW+ motherboard
Two Athlon MP2800+ boxed (i.e. using their own heatsink)
Yamaha CD-RW (can find out model if important)
13GB ATA-100 HDD (ditto with model)
4 x 512MB DDR PC2100 266MHz 184pin (2GB total)
Antec True Power PSU (lots of power)
13GB HDD & CD-RW connected to IDE-3 as master & slave (will be using IDE-1
for RAID later)

snip

a) Windows could not load the install for CDROM. Contact your hard vendor
for assistance
snip


You'll laugh but in the past I encountered similar problems several times
when trying to install Win2k from a CDRW drive. Substituted a standard CDR
drive and all was fine. Don't ask why.

You'll laugh but in the past I encountered similar problems several times
when trying to install Win2k from a CDRW drive. Substituted a standard CDR
drive and all was fine. Don't ask why.

Hmm, we are installing from a CD-RW drive... I did try swapping it at some
point during one of the MANY installs :-) But it's back with the Yamaha
drive at the moment. Thinking about it, we have had a few issues with this
CD drive.

I've swapped the 2GB of DDR RAM at the moment and trying with a spare 128MB
so see if it could be RAM related. If this fails, I'll try your suggestion
and copy the install files onto the HDD from MS-DOS first and install from
there.

Thanks, Rob.

You'll laugh but in the past I encountered similar problems several times

PS. I've had enough quirks with motherboards in the past that I probably
will laugh :-)

Rob.

I've swapped the 2GB of DDR RAM at the moment and trying with a spare
128MB
so see if it could be RAM related. If this fails, I'll try your suggestion
and copy the install files onto the HDD from MS-DOS first and install from
there.

Okay, so swapping the RAM out didn't help either so only things left to try
a

1. Don't use CD-RW for set-up
2. Swap the HDD
3. Send motherboard & processors back as faulty

It's still doing the "hang on ALT-CTRL-DEL just before detecting the IDE
devices so let's assume it's that CD-RW drive!

Copying the I386 folder to the HDD and will do install from there.

Cheers, Rob.

You'll laugh but in the past I encountered similar problems several times
when trying to install Win2k from a CDRW drive. Substituted a standard CDR
drive and all was fine. Don't ask why.

On getting to the HDD being the only device that I'm able to replace, I
noticed the possible problem!!

One of the little high speed ATA cable wires had got shredded against the
metal work and was hanging off. Fingers crossed. Either it's always been
broken or was broken during many of the removals of RAM, HDD, CD-ROM whilst
trying to get it working.

I hope the former...

Cheers, Rob.

I hope the former...

Nope, didn't help. Time to give up on this board and send it back and go for
an Intel CPU one. I was taking a risk with a dual CPU AMD board and I've now
spend hours trying to get this thing to install Windows 2000 Server. I
should have known better :-)

Just doesn't want to work no matter how I try. Every avenue draws a blank.
Windows 2000 SP4 fails to install with multiple weird errors about missing
drivers etc.

Windows 2000 without SP4 installs a lot cleaner but then trashes the
registry after about the 3rd reboot.

Rob.