[Saddu]

I just put together a new system which has 2 hard drives: SATA and ATA100. I installed windows XP Home edition from a slipstreamed SP2 CD I created earlier on the SATA drive and everything loads up fine; XP starts, have internet connection and all looks in order. So I installed a couple of rounds of automatic updates from the windows autoinstaller and now when my system starts, I get the Windows XP start screen (with the bar gonig accross showing progress), the 3 keyboard lights blink like it is ready to go into the windows GUI and nothing happens. The fans are on, the CD is accessed (win xp install) a couple of times but no HDD activity and the computer just hangs. I tried restarting under safe mode and it loads up a bunch of files, gets to gagp30kx.sys, keyboard lights blink and then nothing. I tried to repair install but don't have the option to "repair" w/o going into the console.

I couldn't figure out the problem so formatteed the drive and did a clean install of XP. This time, instead of doing the XP auto updates, I first loaded the video drivers from CD (gagp30kx.sys mentioned before is an AGP driver so wanted to make sure it wasn't the culprit). System reboots fine. After a couple of restarts, my internet connection stops working device manager shows no conflicts here and comp keeps trying to get IP address but fails; laptop on same router was fine. I unistalled ethernet drivers, restarted and updated them from ASUS mobo CD along with the audio drivers. Upon restart, I get the same blank screen problem again (can't do safe mode or repair windows). In the interest of full disclosure, my device manager had yellow questions next to 2 devices: audio and unkown pci device. that is the reason why i installed the audio drivers from mobo CD. Re: the unkown pci device, no idea what it is (I have no PCI cards plugged in). System = CPU + mobo + 2 RAM DIMMs (work fine in other comp), 2 HDDs, 1 video card (worked fine in other comp).

Finally, before this try, I had done a clean install of XP, then installed drivers (audio, usb, via chipset, ethernet) from the mobo cd and restarted. Got the same blank screen problem as well.

Interestingly, I have installed XP onto my old ATA100 hard drive and that seems fine for now (only performed auto updates and mobo driver updates mentioned above). However, after working fine for hours, now the internet connection doesn't work (no hardware conflicts, just keeps trying to get IP adderss). I have already restarted the router to reset settings but to no avail.

I am completely stumped here - any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

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This might be a problem with using VIA 4 in 1 drivers while trying to use the microsoft AGP drivers(gagp30kx).

Although this article is slightly different it may apply somewhat to your problem.

http://forums.viaare...068&STARTPAGE=1

Something else to check is that the bootup order has been changed in the bios. Is it set to boot from the scsi drive? In XP, my computer says the sata drive is a scsi drive.

SRX660

[SRX660]

This might be a problem with using VIA 4 in 1 drivers while trying to use the microsoft AGP drivers(gagp30kx).

Although this article is slightly different it may apply somewhat to your problem.

http://forums.viaare...068&STARTPAGE=1

Something else to check is that the bootup order has been changed in the bios. Is it set to boot from the scsi drive? In XP, my computer says the sata drive is a scsi drive.

SRX660

[Saddu]

Thanks SRX660, but the problem seems a bit different in that my comptuer just freezes up and doesn't do anything while most people with this issue were able to play around with their comp a bit. Also, that doesn't explain the internet connection issues. could malware be doing this? I have only gone to ati.com, microsft.com and google.com with a firewall up.

re: the boot order, it just recognizes it as HDD (WD160JS...)

Edited by Saddu, 03 April 2006 - 09:39 AM.

[Saddu]

btw, system is:
mobo = ASUS A8V-MX
cpu = athlon64 3700+
ram = 2 512MB PC3200 DIMMs
vcard = ATI x800 Turbo (AGP 8x)
HDD = SATA II Western Digital WD160JS

[Saddu]

Update: So I did another clean install of XP (SP2) and windows starts fine. Then I installed video drivers using videocard install CD and computer booted up fine and everything looked good. Device manager showed a yellow "?" by audio device and an unkown pci device. I told it to install driver but it couldn't find it on its own. So I used the mobo CD to install the audio drivers (realtek AC'97) for onboard audio. It installed everything and before I restarted, I looked at the device manager - both the yellow"?"s had gone away and device manager identified the audio device. So I restarted as instructed and bam! same problem, computer POSTs, I see the windows logo and the progress bar, then the keyboard lights flash and black screen. I left it as is for 30 mins to no avail. Comp doesn't restart "normally" or in "safe mode". There's got to be something I can do (beside another clean install)! I even turned off onboard audio in BIOS but no help. btw, I saved a system restore point before installing audio drivers; can I somehow use this w/o booting into windows? Any suggestions with the problem will be welcome. Thanks!

Edited by Saddu, 03 April 2006 - 08:54 PM.