Alright, as I posted in the /dqn/ "ITT we solve the question above us" thread earlier:
Alright, so I put this new PC together, and it keeps crashing during WinXP setup. I've updated the BIOS, exchanged the CD/DVD drive, low-level formatted the harddrive twice and taken out all nonessential hardware. Yet it still bluescreens during XP setup.
I might also add that I tried three different pirated WinXP Professional CDs, one with SP1, the other two with SP2 (one of them a modded unattended setup one). All of them crashed and bluescreened at a random point during setup (the furthest I ever got was on SP1, a couple minutes after accepting the default network settings). The computer also behaves a bit strangely in other ways. For one thing, it refuses to boot from floppy, always giving me an I/O error when I try (yes, I have tried different floppies and different drives). I spent hours trying to find a way to get a DOS boot CD because the BIOS update needed DOS. For another thing, even booting Knoppix it occasionally hung for no apparent reason.
So yes, I'm thinking of sending the machine in to this computer mag I subscribe to. They're running a "bug of the month" feature where people send in PCs with particularly tricky problems and they write up their solution. Any other suggestions? Specs of my PC are:
Mainboard: Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe (got slightly used off ebay, BIOS updated to version 1205)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (bought new)
Graphics card: Axle Geforce 7900 GT (bought new)
RAM: 2*1024 MB (noname,removed from a newly bought budget PC)
DVD burner: LG (don't have the model number, came with the same budget PC)
HDD: Maxtor, 300 GB, S-ATA (also from budget PC, partitioned using PartitionMagic into one 10 GB, one 90 GB and two 100 GB partitions, all FAT32)
Oh, and in case this is relevant, PSU is a 450W one.
BSOD = bad drivers/bad hardware.
I'd suspect the mobo, as it's the only non-new item from your list.
Ubuntu Linux - GNU/Linux for human beings
http://www.ubuntu.com/
>>1 Is that Maxtor a SATA-II?
Maxtor SATA II drives often don't work very well with nForce SATA controllers, which I believe the Asus A8N-E uses.
>RAM: 2*1024 MB (noname,removed from a newly bought budget PC)
I got a lot of blue screens during Win2K setup when I had a bad stick of RAM. You might want to try testing it with a spare.
Did you write down the error messages on your blue screens?
Are you sure you know how to copy a CD?
I got bluescreens during an XP setup on a system previously running fine under 2K. Can't remember what I did to fix it, now. Think I just pulled some random piece of hardware, a modem or something.
Download a Gentoo Linux bootdisk. (http://www.gentoo.org)
Run Memtest. If it works, boot the system from the disk and type "lspci" on a terminal.
Or, you could just use PCLinuxOS (http://www.pclinuxos.com) which is the easiest linux distro ever...
no, easiest linux distro ever http://www.apple.com/macosx/
>>10 Except that it's not Linux ... not by a long shot.
memtest86, incidentally, is provided with a lot of distributions, not just Gentoo. Ubuntu and Damn Small Linux are two that come to mind.
Or, of course, you can grab it from http://www.memtest86.com
I need to know if smoothwall linux supports multiple WAN interfaces... or if any Linux NOS does? It doesn't have to be dynamic load balancing, just general port/ip forwarding rules to assign different computers/typs of traffic on one WAN interface or another. Any info is helpful, as I am a Linux/networking ch00b.
>>12 Kindly stay on-topic please? This thread has nothing to do with Smoothwall or Linux (other than mentioning it in a few places).
Set the memory timings to be less aggressive, enable PnP OS, disable FastWrite, disable auto overclock (enabled by default on some ASUSes!!!), disable RAID if not used and it should work.
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