Topic: New Motherboard - Vista - Couple of problems!

[Moreno]

Hi y'all,


Some of you may remember that I was having trouble with the asrock motherboard and the graphics card, thank you very much for all the help during that, I have now returned it and exchanged it for an asus motherboard which is currently working well apart from a couple of small aspects.

Can anyone shed any light on why it is taking so long for vista to start on the system? I booted the machine with XP and then loaded vista on top of it. It said that it would hold the old windows files else where and then load vista on top, but it seems to take like 8-10mins to load up. Anyone know what the problem is?

Also, secondly.....Once actually into the system, I go to shut down and it shuts down, but straight away boots up again, as if i have pressed restart....WTF is going on  !!!!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated. 

[Sandra]

Long startup times are often caused by lots of programs that you dont use each time you start the pc loading as windows loads.

Go to RUN and then type MSCONFIG in the box and tick selective startup.
Then go to the startup tab and untick all the programs that are set to start up that you dont need.
You only really need your AV, Firewall and windows own security ones such as Bit Defender.

Click on Apply and then restart your pc.
The box will come up saying that you have used system config just click ok.
Hopefully that wil speed up any subsequent start ups.

The rebooting is a puzzle, all I can suggest trying is that you go to Control Panel/System/System Protection then click on the Advanced tab of the System Properties box that appears then click on Settings for the Startup and Recovery part.
Untick Automatically Restart in the System Failure part.

It may think its failing as its shutting down and so restart if that box is ticked.
Other than that I cant think why it should be doing it.

[Moreno]

Sandra to the rescue again 


I will try what you have suggested when I get home. One thing I will say, is that it was very slow booting up from the start with no programs loaded on. The only thing I can think of is that vista has loads of underlying programs working.

Does this stir things up a little?

Long startup times are often caused by lots of programs that you dont use each time you start the pc loading as windows loads.

Go to RUN and then type MSCONFIG in the box and tick selective startup.
Then go to the startup tab and untick all the programs that are set to start up that you dont need.
You only really need your AV, Firewall and windows own security ones such as Bit Defender.

Click on Apply and then restart your pc.
The box will come up saying that you have used system config just click ok.
Hopefully that wil speed up any subsequent start ups.

The rebooting is a puzzle, all I can suggest trying is that you go to Control Panel/System/System Protection then click on the Advanced tab of the System Properties box that appears then click on Settings for the Startup and Recovery part.
Untick Automatically Restart in the System Failure part.

It may think its failing as its shutting down and so restart if that box is ticked.
Other than that I cant think why it should be doing it.

[Sandra]

All windows OSs load a lot of unnecessary programs but if you have installed Vista over XP I would have thought that it should have left applications such as Office, which is a big program, plus other microsofts programs intact.

Yours does seem to take a long time to load though.
Are the specs, especially the ram, sufficient to run Vista ?

My Vista Ultimate, clean install, seems to load a litle quicker if anything than XP pro did.

[Moreno]

I have 1gb ddr2 ram in there, which according to the cpu meter seems to be running at 50% odd.

 

All windows OSs load a lot of unnecessary programs but if you have installed Vista over XP I would have thought that it should have left applications such as Office, which is a big program, plus other microsofts programs intact.

Yours does seem to take a long time to load though.
Are the specs, especially the ram, sufficient to run Vista ?

My Vista Ultimate, clean install, seems to load a litle quicker if anything than XP pro did.

[Sandra]

That should be ok, mine runs fine on 1 gig but 2 gig would be better if using a lot of the extra graphics features I think.

[Moreno]

Right I have gone into msconfig, and unticked all the programs etc.....still running slow. Do you think it has anything to do with the fact I installed XP? Everytime I try to boot from the vista disc it tells me it is not a system disk....as soon as i put the xp one in, it boots as normal and installs.....

That should be ok, mine runs fine on 1 gig but 2 gig would be better if using a lot of the extra graphics features I think.

[Sandra]

So you havent actually installed vista over XP youre running it from the CD ?

[Moreno]

No its running. I have taken the cd out and it works fine, but still takes ages to boot up. I am going to get another stick of ram, but I think their is a different problem as to why it will not boot from the disk and takes ages to boot from hard drive.

So you havent actually installed vista over XP youre running it from the CD ?

[Sandra]

If you have 1 gig of ram already I cant see adding any more improving its boot time.

I would be tempted to format and reinstall Vista but if your pc wont boot from the Vista disc thats not going to be feasible.

Can you try the Vista disk in another pc as I am sure that all versions of Vista are bootable.

[Moreno]

Ok, I have had some progress. I disconnected everything and just left my dvd player and one 250gb hard drive. I then went to bios and obviously set it to boot from cd. It then began to boot and went straight through to installation. It gave me no option but to install a clean copy. So i did this and basically I got this message

Setup Error - "could not reinitialize the deployment engine"

I have been looking around forums on the internet and have found the following answers for this problem.....

"Have encountered the same error with a 250GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA disc in a Shuttle XPC SN95V2.
Would be interesting to understand if the issue is related to the size or interface of the disk?"

"I was getting the same error from RC1 my self on an Asus M2R32-MVP, with 2 Samsung SATA drives RAID 0. What fixed it for me was to delete the drive, and create a new partition, and format from within the Windows setup. Don't know if this will solve your problem, but its what fixed me up. I am not dual booting though"

SO I am thinking that now it doesn't like the 250gb hard drive  so I am thinking of either partitioning the drive or using the other....this is where the next problem starts.....Firsty when booting from CD it gave me no option to partition drive, and when I disconnected the 250gb HD and connected the 125gb one, it just stayed on the motherboard logo screen. Can the system boot from the SATA drive....am I right in saying that most will by default try to boot from IDE?

Anyone encountered this problem?

If you have 1 gig of ram already I cant see adding any more improving its boot time.

I would be tempted to format and reinstall Vista but if your pc wont boot from the Vista disc thats not going to be feasible.

Can you try the Vista disk in another pc as I am sure that all versions of Vista are bootable.

[Sandra]

The size shouldnt matter, XP would only see up to 137 gig of a drive until it was installed and had SP2 on but it still allowed you to create a partition of up to 137 gig to install the OS on, then you could create a second partition in windows Disk Management to use the remainder of the hard drive.

I dont think that Vista will have that limitation and even if it did it should still allow you to create a partition, of whichever size you want, to install the OS on.

I think the problem is that you are booting from a SATA drive, as you assumed it might be.

If your motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA, some do some dont, then you need to load the SATA controller drivers from the motherboard CD.

I have only done one Vista installation on a SATA drive and that Asus motherboard supported booting from SATA.
With XP you had to press F6, I think, when asked to install the SATA controller driver from the motherboard CD or from a floppy if you had already extracted the drivers from the CD.

Does it ask you at some point if you need to load 3rd party SATA or RAID drivers ?

If so then the motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA by itself.

Can you tell me which Asus motherboard you are using.

Some motherboards have 2 different SATA controllers, if you look at the SATA data cable connectors you mave have 2 or more red coloured ones and another 2 or more black or even blue coloured ones.

It may be that the bios only supports booting from one SATA controller.

[Moreno]

Sandra, you are getting me wrong....my sata Hard drive is unplugged and I only have the 250gb IDE one plugged in.

I have the ASUS P5VD2-X.

If I boot from an XP disk, and then create a partition on the 250gb IDE drive, will vista recognise this?

The size shouldnt matter, XP would only see up to 137 gig of a drive until it was installed and had SP2 on but it still allowed you to create a partition of up to 137 gig to install the OS on, then you could create a second partition in windows Disk Management to use the remainder of the hard drive.

I dont think that Vista will have that limitation and even if it did it should still allow you to create a partition, of whichever size you want, to install the OS on.

I think the problem is that you are booting from a SATA drive, as you assumed it might be.

If your motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA, some do some dont, then you need to load the SATA controller drivers from the motherboard CD.

I have only done one Vista installation on a SATA drive and that Asus motherboard supported booting from SATA.
With XP you had to press F6, I think, when asked to install the SATA controller driver from the motherboard CD or from a floppy if you had already extracted the drivers from the CD.

Does it ask you at some point if you need to load 3rd party SATA or RAID drivers ?

If so then the motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA by itself.

Can you tell me which Asus motherboard you are using.

Some motherboards have 2 different SATA controllers, if you look at the SATA data cable connectors you mave have 2 or more red coloured ones and another 2 or more black or even blue coloured ones.

It may be that the bios only supports booting from one SATA controller.

[Sandra]

Thanks for clarifying your setup.

I woud always rather do a clean install of an OS rather than install one and then install another over it.

I find it starnge that Vista wont partition an IDE drive straight from the off 

[Moreno]

Last night I had a good muck around with the system, managed to get it all loaded. Thanks for your help Sandra!

One last thing....was given some Kingston ram, do you think it will be compatible with this motherboard? I will be running it alone, so don't take into consideration what i already have.....

I have the ASUS P5VD2-X motherboard and the memory is Kingston XW8200/1GB DDR2

Cheers

Thanks for clarifying your setup.

I woud always rather do a clean install of an OS rather than install one and then install another over it.

I find it starnge that Vista wont partition an IDE drive straight from the off