Custom build, can't install OS......wtf

P

pollux114

New Member
So here's the deal, I built a custom PC, got everything put together, powered up and tried to install Win7.

- First it took forever to get through the second phase of "Windows is loading files",
- then it took forever to get past the "starting Windows" screen (black screen with the pulsating windows logo)
- Then it goes to the blue(leaf graphic) screen and it takes forever for the window to pop up to choose your location.

(I'm about an hour in at this point)

- I can load RAID drivers no problem (but I can't load the x64 version, even though it's x64 windows) and it recognizes the RAID 0 array and begins installation.

- There's a list of items, "Copying files", "expanding Files", etc. The "copying files" takes like a second then gets a green checkmark and moves onto "expanding files"........here's where I hit a wall.

- It was expanding files for about 3 hours before I finally went to bed, at that point it was at 2%. When I got up this morning there was an error message saying it couldn't install windows because the installation files weren't available.

Here are the specs of the system:

- AMD PhenomII X6 1090T Black Edition
- GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 RT Motherboard
- Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM 1333 (PC3 10666)
- AMD Radeon HD 2600XT 512MB PCIE x16
- 640GB Western Digital Caviar Black SATAIII WD6402AAEX (2 of them set up in RAID 0)
- An older 160GB SATA WD hard drive that I was going to use for a download drive (if this might be the problem I can lose it)
- 450W PSU
- IDE DVDRW w/lightscribe and DVD-ROM drive


Bios settings are all default except for enabling RAID mode.


I figured it might be my Win7 disk, so I tried both 32 and 64 bit versions of XP.........no dice. On those it would complete the first stage of the install, reboot and act like it had never done anything...it would just go right into the install process again.

I've tried the RAM in different slots, tried each of the 4GB sticks by themselves, tried disconnecting the older HDD........nothing changed.

Any suggestions?
 
try to install windows without using raid. try native ide, or ahci, or both and see if it installs then. if so i would say your raid controler is finicky, or a hard drive isnt working right
 
Either bad memory or bad hard drive. Not sure about the new SATA 3 caviar black drives but I know the SATA 2 caviar black has some issues. If you look in my sig, I have 2 SATA 2 cavair black drives in raid 0, however, I had to rma one drive because it took hours to install XP. I narrowed it down to one being bad as I installed xp to each separate drive and found the bad one.

Run Memtest on your memory first and then you may have run diagnostics on each hard drive by downloading and running western digital diagnostics.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=613&sid=30&lang=en

Download the dos cd version and then use burning software to burn the iso to a cd and then boot to it and run the extended test.
 
Tried that, but I did forget to mention it in the original post, sorry.

WinXP needs to install RAID drivers from a floppy which I don't have, so I just tried to install XP on the single SATAII 160GB, but I had exactly the same result.

I had a similiar thing happen years ago where it took forever to install the OS, but it turns out the RAM wasn't compatible with the board........that shouldn't be the problem here, the XP install actually went very quickly it just didn't seem to "stick".
 
maybe DVD drive

Wondering now if it's a problem with the DVD drive(s).

I think I'll try installing 7 from a USB, if that doesn't work I'll try the XP install to the SATAIII's one at a time.

For some reason, when I hit tab at the logo screen to go to POST, I don't ever actually see the POST screen so I can't see the memtest.
 
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