Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

New Computer Crashes During Operating System Install

Mar 21, 2004 3:48AM PST

I just built my first computer soyo socket A K7VMP2 with the AMD 2400+ CPU 256 mb ram and a Maxor 40 Gig harddrive a new tower with 350 watt powersupply. The only thing I didnt buy new was my floppy,cdrom and cdr. After I got it assembled I set clock to run at 133 mhz and disabled the ABR (wouldnt run untill I disabled the ABR). The next thing I did was I tried to load windows xp professional, it went threw the format and copying of files fine but when it got to the set up it just shutoff and lost everything and had to fdisk and start over I did this several times but it would just shutoff or say missing install files. I even tried to load windows me and during the setup it shutoff as well and all I could get was a grey screen. I finally got a version of windows 98 to install on my computer but it too shutoff several times during the setup. My question is did I miss a step or what am I doing wrong? ANY INPUT WOULD BE GREATLY APPRECIATED!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re:New Computer Crashes During Operating System Install
Mar 21, 2004 4:18AM PST

A poster on this board had a similar issue. They didn't use any heatsink heat tab or heatsink compound. New builders usually burn out a CPU if they don't know this.

But it's worth noting that a new motherboard is usually shipped with an out-of-date BIOS, so you as the system builder get to update that.

In closing, XP "glides" onto good hardware, but you get to find it.

Bob

- Collapse -
Re:Re:New Computer Crashes During Operating System Install
Mar 21, 2004 6:26AM PST

Thanks for your post, I too thought I may not have used enough heatsink compound so I went back and inspected the cpu for cracks or whatever and put a little extra compound on it. Yet, when I tried to install windows me on top of win 98 it did the same thing just shut off like it had been unplugged. I have win 98 on there now but it runs great on the machine it has never shutdown on me as of yet, it only does that when I am trying to upgrade to xp or me.

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Re:New Computer Crashes During Operating System Install
Mar 21, 2004 6:33AM PST

Thats the clue. I would do as Bob suggests, and update the BIOS.

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Re:Re:New Computer Crashes During Operating System Install
Mar 21, 2004 6:42AM PST

That was pretty much what I was thinking as well, but the problem is there appears to be no update for the Bios. I just went and checked on the Soyo website. Thanks

- Collapse -
Re:New Computer Crashes During Operating System Install
Mar 21, 2004 7:58PM PST

You did not mention what video card you are using. I had a similar problem little more than a year ago, and it turned out to be some sort of conflict with the video card.

To work through the problem, I used an older AGP card to install XP, then installed the new card after the OS install was complete. The machine has been working great for more than a year. That machine was running the same mobo/CPU. The video card was an ATI Radeon 7000. I have never encountered that problem again, but I have never used that hardware combination again.

Another thing you did not mention was how many sticks of RAM you have. If you have 2 128 sticks, try swapping out the sticks one at a time to see if the problem goes away. If not, buy another stick of 256 (256 MB is not enough). Take out the old stick and replace it with the new. If the problem disappears, replace your old 256 on an RMA and add it to your new system. I have seen defective or damaged RAM do extremely odd things to computers.

Make sure you always use failsafe BIOS defaults until you finish installing the OS, drivers and Windows Updates. Then try the "Turbo" settings once your machine works nice with the basic bios defaults. The more agressive settings sometime cause severe problems with even the best hardware.

Hope this helps.