Asus may have screwed me again

[BobaFettK]

So now that I've been tooling around with a functional super pc for over a month after getting a working mobo, I decided to back up saved games and reinstall windows xp, since I have downloaded and installed a lot of trial programs that bugged up the registry,

When reinstalling Windows, after the installation gets to 100% and restarts the machine to continue the installation, the system starts the installation process over from the beginning in blue-screen DOS-style mode. Therefore, it's a neverending cycle and the installation never finishes. I did reformat the partition, so there should be no conflict caused by the previous install.

The only thing I can think of that could be causing this problem is that about a month ago I installed a BIOS update from Asus that is listed on their site as the newest BIOS for the P5KC. While it did not cause any noticeable problems, I learned from reading the message boards on ASUS' site that it was ACTUALLY the BIOS update for the P5K. Now, the motherboard will not allow me to install the older version, because it's old. But my motherboard thinks it's a P5K, not a P5KC, even after I reset the CMOS.

Could this change be preventing the completion of Windows XP installation? When I originally installed it was with factory settings, and that's the only difference I can think of in hardware settings.

I am thinking about trying to download the older (and correct) version of the BIOS and using the EZFlash option in the BIOS settings. Will this work, or will it still refuse since the current (but wrong) BIOS is newer? If the mobo will not allow me to revert back to the correct BIOS, is there any other way to fix this?

ASUS has been aware of this problem for weeks, but I believe they have no intention of fixing it. In fact, last I checked they still have that file listed as the P5KC update in their downloads section.

[shyster]

Not that this really helps you in any way, but I am pretty sure that even though your bios will say that it is a P5K motherboard instead of a P5KC, it is still the correct bios update.

That being said there is a way to load on old bios versions, but I have no idea how it is done. I just have seen it mentioned in the Asus forums that people were able to backdate their bios. So if you really want to backdate your bios you can post on the asus forums asking how it might be done, or you could try searching and see if anybody has a post about it.

By the way initially did you load the bios update prior to putting windows on or did you do it from windows?

After all this I doubt it is a motherboard thing, if only because this is not one of the issues I have seen numerously posted about on the asus forums.

By the way for your reinstall you are doing it straight from the XP disk correct, and not from a boot or clone disk that you made with your saved games on it?

My suggestions for this, would be to do a full format. You mentioned that you reformated the computer, but was it a full format or a quick format? If you have already done a full format and you are getting this issue, you could try using WD disk tools, and run the test that writes 1's to the disk clearing anything that might be on it for some reason. Then you could try doing a full format again and seeing if that helps.

After that the only things left to do are call microsoft or asus for tech support perhaps.

By the way what kind of XP disk is it OEM or retail?

[BobaFettK]

It was an OEM version of XP. I got it to work finally. I had to delete the partition, wiping out the multimedia files I had stored on partition 2 in the process. Fortunately I backed up all the important stuff on a portable USB hard drive. It's working fine again (for now, at least). Thanks!