Problems with Windows?

[Buckwh34t]

Started building my PC yesterday and running into a couple of problems.

My PC:


Intel Core 2 Duo E6750
ASUS P5N-E
Crucial Ballistix 2GB PC2 6400
SAMSUNG SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB
Windows XP home edition

1. First Boot seemed to go well but there was one problem. Bios was reading the CPU as a 664MHZ. When I finally got to windows, the system spec recognized the duel core as 1.67GHZ but still on start up it says 664.

2. I get a blue screen 'machine check exception" 5 out of 6 times I try to get to windows, the rest of the time I was able to get to windows to load up the basic drivers. But it didnt seem to solve the problem. My Windows XP is made specifically for my old HD. But I am trying to make it work on the new Sata drive I have. I am thinking this is the problem. I tried to use the old HD but it looks like I will have to reformat to get it to work.

ideas?

[The Wise Monkey]

Hmm, never heard of anything like this before. Try loading the fail-safe defaults in the BIOS and see if that has any effect.

As for the HD, what do you mean when you say that your XP is made specifically for your HD? Did it come pre-installed?

[Buckwh34t]

I have Bios set to Default. I am assuming that is the same as 'fail-safe default'.

I purchased my old PC and it came with Windows installed. The only windows cd I have is called 'Magnell Recovery CD'. It says on the CD that it is only suppose to be used for backup and recovery of the Magnell computer system. So it seems that windows will only work on that particular HD?

Was trying to use the backup CD to hopefully keep from having to purchase another windows cd.

I also tried to use the old HD as the primary for the new computer but it wouldnt work in its 'as is' state. My next step was to reformat and load up windows using the old HD. Although, I wanted to avoid doing that because of how much a pain it is reinstall all the software. Also, I would lose the ability to use my old PC.

[The Wise Monkey]

Ok, you won't be able to install that version of windows - like you said, it was built for a certain system and so only contains the drivers for specific system components. XP is reasonably cheap now, so it won't be too much of an expenditure, but it is an extra annoyance none the less.

Your processor should have a clock speed of 2.66 GHz - I have that excellent processor myself - so I'm not sure what is happening in the BIOS. Try using a program such as CPU-Z (http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php) to look at your system specs and see if that recognises the full processor speed.

[Buckwh34t]

Purchased Windows XP and formated the 500G drive. Holy Cow! it took over 90min to format. Guess that is normal. After formating it started to load up some files from the disc. There were about 15-20 files (.dll and .sys) that wouldnt transfer from the disc. I prayed it wouldnt make a difference so I continued...

I experienced the blue screen of death a few more times, but I am starting to think it is a conflict of my cd drives, so I just unplugged one of them and it seemed to solve the problem.

Next I Got into windows and started installing my motherboard drivers. After installing the sound driver I rebooted and got the following error after windows comes up:

RUNDLL ERROR LOADING streamci.dll
The specified module could not be found.

My fear had come true one of the files that wouldnt transfer from the windows disc had now caused my computer to lock up and it wont run at all.

So, what now? try and reinstall windows again, but why wont those files install? It is a brand new CD, not that it cant be a bad one..

Thanks for any advice you can give.

[Buckwh34t]

After reading through Microsoft support, it seems that some older cd drives dont read all the data on the windows cd very well. So I reloaded windows using my newer dvd drive and so far (fingers crossed) everything seems to be running pretty well. Still updating drivers but I think the worst part is over! I do appreciate this website, thanks again for the support.

[The Wise Monkey]

Glad you got it working. :)

I had the same problem with an older server that I was rebuilding, so I understand what you mean.

It was worse for me because the server was our storage server and so had 2TB of storage. :O

Took about 6 hours to do a complete format. XD