shaggy10000 Posted December 10, 2004 Share Posted December 10, 2004 im having problems installing win xp when i boot from cd the system hangs at the screen that says setup is checking hardware configuration. i know this could be a problem with any of the components but i am using process of elimination and starting with the ram. i have msi k8t neo fsr board with amd 64 3400 1meg L2. corsair xms pc3200 LL platinum. 2x256 v1.1 which i believe is bh-5. sata raptor hd and seagate IDE drive as well. enermax 450 ps and all is water cooled. i have tried ram in different slots and have tried 1 at a time in different slots. i have tried different timings currently 2.5-2-2-6, but have not had the voltage over 2.6 i have tried installing on ide drive and sata one at a time with no luck. i have flashed bios to current, still no luck. one note is that i can install win ME on ide drive and run warcraft 3 all night with no problems with both sticks installed. i ran memtest and found one of my sticks to have errors while the other was fine in the same slot. so i tried with only the good one in slot 1 and still no luck. ive tried 3 different xp disks that i know work. can install in my other computer with no problems. any ideas would help a bunch thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 10, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 10, 2004 Please install the modules in slots 1-3 or 2-3 and then clear the bios and load setup defaults and set the following settings and then test the system with http://www.memtest.org. CAS Latency CL=2.0 Row Cycle Time tRC Bios Default Row Refresh Cyc Time tRFC Bios Default Ras# to CAS# delay tRCD 3 Row to Row delay Bios Default Min Ras# Active Time tRAS 5 Row Precharge Time tRP 2 Write Recovery Time Bios Default Write to Read delay Bios Default Read to Write Delay Bios Default Refresh Period tREF Bios Default Enable 2T Timing Disabled Then test the system with http://www.memtest.org and make sure it's stable! If you have problems, I would set Enable 2T Timings to AUTO and test it again! In addition, if you have a 90nm CPU you may need to get the latest beta bios from MSI's use forum as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 12, 2004 Author Share Posted December 12, 2004 this is kind of a silly question but how do i tell if i have a 90nm cpu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 12, 2004 Author Share Posted December 12, 2004 ok set the timings and all errors are gone (whew) still wont let me install xp but at least im making some headway thanks for all the help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 14, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 14, 2004 What is the error message it gives you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 15, 2004 Author Share Posted December 15, 2004 i dont actually get an error message, rather it hangs at the screen that says setup is checking hardware configuration when i try to boot from the xp disk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 15, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 15, 2004 What Video Card are you using? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 15, 2004 Author Share Posted December 15, 2004 it's an nvidia card g force mmx 4000 8x agp hopefully santa brings a 6800 ultra. i have also contacted msi tech support they said to try a different video card but i dont have another 1.5v new style video card laying around. and i dont have an old pci either so im trying to find someone around here who has one i can borrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 15, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 15, 2004 You might check with the maker of the card and see if they have a new firmware and then try and set the AGP to 4X Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 15, 2004 Author Share Posted December 15, 2004 ahhh i didnt think of that i will try that tonight and let you know thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 15, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 15, 2004 Please let me know how you make out! In addition, you can try over at http://www.houseofmobos.com as well they may have some suggestions! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scifiman Posted December 16, 2004 Share Posted December 16, 2004 Hey man, I know the feeling. When I first put my comp together, I immediately put linux on it. Then when I went to install Windows, mine was doing exactly what yours is doing. I checked everything but it was all fine. Finally I wiped the drive and started over with Windows first. Worked fine. Turned out my problem was a corrupt master boot record. If you need to, back up anything that may be on the hard drive and then wipe it. If the winxp cd's aren't working you could probably just run fdisk from an old win98 boot disk, then repartition in the xp setup once it comes up. Hope this helps ;): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 16, 2004 Author Share Posted December 16, 2004 thanks for the tip i have actually wiped both drives clean and re partitioned both of them in fact the sata drive is brand new never had anything installed. i tell you im really wondering if i made the right choice for the mb. i have been working on this off and on for 2 months, and im about ready to buy a different board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 17, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 17, 2004 Did you try setting the AGP multiplier to 4? And have you checked for a newer Video Bios? Also I would contact MSI's Tech support and or their forum and see if there are others with the same issue. One other thing I would try would be another PSU just to test if you can barrow one, which might help isolate the problem as well. And what MB Bios version do you have and have you tried to clear the MB bios and load setup defaults? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 18, 2004 Author Share Posted December 18, 2004 ok the bios version is the newest one v1.8 i flashed a couple of weeks ago to see if that would help. i have tried to update the video bios with live update and it says that my video card is not compatible with the update, so i did not try that. also it looks like i dont have any options to change for the agp except for the voltage. i couldnt find anywhere to change from 8x to 4x. i did contact msi tech support and they said to try a different video card as well, so i think i found someone with a pci video card to use. it should be here sometime today, so i will try that and keep you all posted thanks for the help Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 18, 2004 Author Share Posted December 18, 2004 almost forgot i did try to reset the bios by using "load bios defaults" setting and also the reset jumper on the board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 19, 2004 Author Share Posted December 19, 2004 ok i tried a pci video card and still no luck. i also made sure to change the bios settings from agp to pci. still nothing so now i go back to msi tech support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 20, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 20, 2004 Please let us know what MSI TSD has to say, we can try and replace the memory for you, but what you have posted sounds like some other problem. Maybe a friend can help you test the memory and Video card and CPU in another system! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted December 20, 2004 Author Share Posted December 20, 2004 ok msi tech support said that if a different video card and cd rom doesnt work to rma for replacement. so i will do that after christmas. i will check back then and let you know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted December 22, 2004 Corsair Employees Share Posted December 22, 2004 No problem, please let me know how you make out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaggy10000 Posted January 26, 2005 Author Share Posted January 26, 2005 Well i got the board back and all is good. win xp install's fine and runs perfect. one thing to note is that i got the same board back. i know this from a tiny scratch that i remember on the board. also my boot up screens are different, very different. so im not sure what they did but obviously they gave it a new bios. they did not tell me what they did on the packing slip, so i dont know exactly what they did. the only thing that im not happy about is the wait time. holy crap it sat in their shop for 11 days not counting shipping time which was 2 days each way for a total of 15 days. way too slow. so beware if you live in the east coast you are looking at almost a whole month including shipping. as for shipping they basically just threw it in a box and put some cardboard on top of it and sent it out the door. fortunately i got it unharmed but it could have easily been damaged. to all that helped me with this thanks. i now have a great computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 27, 2005 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 27, 2005 Glad to hear that you are up and running then, but from what I have seen with MB makers RMA 2 weeks is not too bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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