Topic: PC notstarting up and cant install xp

[Biglad]

Hello everyone,

My parents pc had failed about amonth ago andhavespenta lot of  my time trying to fix it for them.

I ended up formatting the hard drive and attempting to reinstall windows xp. Everytime i tried to run the install it would fail reading the drivers.cab file from the XP cd.

After investigating further i had been advised to update the BIOS and to remove the printer cable from the pc.

The installation performed reasonable but during the installation there were several files which it would not copy during the main installation.

After some perserverence i managed to get xpinstalled. And this was running fine.

The pc is an AMD 1800 cpu and a motherboard with built in sound, lan, usb, graphics, and modem.

I noticed on the BIOS settings that the speedwassetat 1150MHz and not the 1800+ it was set at before anyofthese problems reared there heads. After changing the BIOS settings to the 1800+ the pc would fail to boot in to windows and would just keep restarting.

I then changed the speed on the BIOS back to the 1150MHz the pc now worked fine for a day or so. but oncea is now failing to boot in to windows.

I have even tried to install Windows 98 and this operating system just hangs when at the 1800+ speed in the BIOS. As far as temperature settings are concerned theCPU seems to be running at 42 and that isthe highest i have seen it running at. The RAM installed in the pc is Kingston and was supplied with the pc.

The pc has a CD-ROM, a CD-RW drive installed and is running 2 hard drives. on each ide channel i am running a HD and a CD drive. And the power supply is a 300w power supply. All fans start and the CPU heatsink is clean and free from dust.

Does anyone have any ideas of whatis going on. I believe the problem is a hardware one ratherthan a software one.

[Simon]

Hi Biglad, and  

'+1800' is not the speed of an Athlon CPU, it's just the model number.  The actual speed of a +1800 is, I believe, 1.53Ghz, so you were setting your BIOS setting too high.

Hopefully one of our more esteemed techies will be along soon, but I think, basically, that was your initial problem when it refused to boot up.  Not sure why it won't boot, now that you say you've changed back to 1150Mhz, though.  

[Biglad]

Simon,

Thanks for the speedy reply but the bios has been set at the 1800+ for the last 18 months and no problems until recently. There are only 2 setting on the BIOS 1150 and 1800+ Even when the pc was 1st bought it was set in the BIOS to 1800+.

The chip supplied and paid for was an AMD 1800 now even if it runs at a slightly lower speed which i understand with the AMD chips setting the BIOS to run at 1150 seems to be under clocking the pc a bit.

Cheers for the help.

[Sandra]

I have had a couple of occassions where a pc wouldnt install XP and skipped files.
The first time was with a 2500 barton cpu which runs at 1833mhz and the bios was set at 2100mhz, restting it to 1833mhz cured it instantly.
Another time was due to a faulty stick of ram that a program called PC Check picked up, I replaced the ram and it installed and ran fine  

[Biglad]

Sandra/Simon,

Thank you for your responses. Its a really puzzling situation this. Firstly since there are only 2 speed settings, 1150MHz and 1800+, on the BIOS and that only the slower of the 2 (1150MHz) you can amend 1 other sped setting although i think this is related to the speed of RAM chip that is put in.

I am 100% confident that the BIOS was set at the 1800+ speed since we picked it up from the store. It has always seemed to run fine until we have added additional hardware. A CD-RW drive, Additional memory and a broadband modem, Additional HD, this time it went funny was when i plugged in a network gateway and uninstalled the broadband modem.

I have tried an install with just 1 HD and CD and it installed a little better although i left both 256MB memory cards in. I will try to strip everything out of the pc and try to see if i get any BIOS Beeps. Then i shall try to install with just the bare minimum.

I never seem to have any problems when i have had Intel Pentium PCs though.

Cheers for your help though
Craig.

[Biglad]

All,

Root cause found. BIOS si set to run AMD Athlon xp 1800+.

Have stripped everything out and removed 1 memory card and all is well running smooth ifa little slow but installed xp no errors and no probs.

1st thing is to go play war on my pc supplier. I believe that this may have been faulty when sold.

Cheers all. Hapiest man alive.