Any Hardware Gurus Out There: I'm trying to install OS on AMD64

[wiseant]

Hi All,

AMD64 - Athlon X2 Dual Core 4200+ 2.19 GHz 1 GB DDR2

I bought this computer a few months ago that came with VISTA Home Premium - it's actually running OK and works great for Video Capturing, Encoding, etc.

I want to install XP Pro on a separate IDE Hard Disk (an old 25 GB 5400 rpm) - the existing Vista drive is a SATA

So, I unplugged the SATA drive so I don't have to deal with the Vista install - I also unplugged the "Multi Card Reader" on advice from a local Windows certified technician)

I hooked up the IDE Hard Disk along with a DVDRW and a floppy disk drive
I was able to install Windows98SE but when I tried to install Windows 2000 or XP the installations failed

1. I tried to install W2KP and XP from within Windows98 - both installs failed, so I repartitioned and reformatted the hard disk (making sure the partition was active and less than the supposed 8 GB limit) and booted from my win98 floppy, enabled CD access and tried to install from the dos prompt (E:\...\i386\winnt):
a) W2KP failed and the error message was that the temporary files created by the Windows 2000 install could not be found on the hard disk!
b) XP failed - it copied the initial files but when it started to copy the other files it just hung and when I rebooted and restarted the install, the error message was that the EULA could not be found
c) so, I repartitioned the drive, formatted it a:format c:/u/s and tried again - still the same problems - so I used xcopy /e (to copy all the subdirectories) and copied the contents to my hard disk - first I did this with W2KP and tried installing from the C prompt (I used himem.sys, config.sys (DEVICE=HIMEM.SYS), and initialized smartdrv.exe - I got the same error - can't find the temporary files created . . .
d) so I did exactly the same thing with XP as in c) above and got the same XP error - can't find EULA

One bizarre thing I noted is that when the first W2KP install failed and I decided to try the install from the dos prompt - W2KP noted that the temporary files (that it said it couldn't find) had to be deleted first - this process (deleting about 400 MB of files) took over two hours!

Can anyone tell me what's happening here?

I have tried almost every CMOS setting: enable/disable USB Controllers, enable/disable PCI Busmaster, enable/disable ONChip SATA Channel, ONChipSATA type = Native IDE (btw what is AHCI?)

I also disabled the Network boot option . . .

My next step is to try and install LinuxMint - but that will be a different ball of wax

Any Hardware Gurus out there - any assistance would be greatly appreciated

TIA

[Konrad Klar]

Not sure what exactly is problem in your case. Anyway, recently I have tried to install Win 2003 on disk where previously Windows XP was installed.
Disk has been detected correctly, instalation has been started. After first reboot message appeared saying that there is "disk read error" ("blad odczytu dysku" - it was polish version of Win 2003).
What was helpful in this case:
running of console (from Windows XP install CD) and typing
FIXMBR
FIXBOOT C:
After that instalation process of Win2003 has been resumed.

= Native IDE (btw what is AHCI?)

AHCI is opposite to Native IDE. It is Native SATA. :)

[wiseant]

Thanks Konrad Klar

I'll give that a try

Yes, now I see: The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a hardware mechanism that allows software to communicate with Serial ATA (SATA) devices such as host bus ..

[wiseant]

OK - before I hooked up the Vista SATA and try a dual boot system I tried one last install

from the win98 floppy boot, this time I used fdisk to repartition the whole drive, then formatted the IDE hard disk, but this time I did not copy the system files to the hard disk C:
then I accessed the W2KP CD and installed from the C: prompt
W2KP install OK, then with XCOPY /e I copied the XP files from the XP CD to the hard disk, then in W2KP I installed XP with the DOS prompt using C:\WINXP\I386\win32nt.exe [or is that winnt32.exe]?

Now I'll try hooking up the Vista SATA drive and see what happens . . .

I hope to get a dual boot system using the IDE and the SATA disks

[Blue_MiSfit]

why are you taking such a complicated approach of installing 98 then 2k then xp? You've disconnected your Vista drive, just boot off the XP CD, and do all the partitioning / formatting from there. You should have _no_ problems.

It's very simple.

If your board is running in AHCI mode, then for it to see your hard drives you need to either load the drivers in text mode from a floppy, or integrate AHCI drivers into your XP CD (nLite).

If not (board in legacy IDE mode), things should be working perfectly.

That being said, if your ultimate goal is a dual boot Vista and XP system then the "ideal" situation would be this:

1) Install XP on target drive, with motherboard in AHCI mode (will either need a floppy with your AHCI drivers, or a custom XP CD with these integrated)

2) Install Vista on target drive, allowing its boot manager to handle the dual booting

You should be able to do both these operations without disconnecting your drive(s), or anything along those lines. It should all work.

When multibooting, it's usually a good idea to installer older OS's first, then newer OS's on top of that.

~MiSfit

When you say

[wiseant]

Hi Blue_MiSfit - thanks for your input

Incidentally these install procedures were tests before I committed to a new large hard disk . . .
And actually, I did not install Win98 - just used the floppy to boot - so I could partition, format and access CD/DVD [fairly old school]
I wanted to see how W2KP installed and ran on this fairly new machine of mine - what driver issues there might be, etc. I had also heard that there were issues installing a different OS when Vista has been "factory-installed"

The CD I use for XP has been updated with SP2 and when I did it I did not make it bootable.

Initially I did not want to repartition my SATA drive in order to install XP and have to worry about the "Multi-Reader" Card drivers for XP . . .

Re Vista - I did not receive an install CD/DVD - as I mentioned it was pre-installed

Now, I do have a "Restore partition" on the Sata disk which I backed up to a DVD - I don't suppose there is anyway I could use this to [re]-install Vista after installing XP?

My goal here is to install W2KP or XP on a separate hard disk and then be able to reconnect the Sata disk with Vista and choose at boot time which OS I wish to run - as a further test I want to hook up a third hard disk and have W2KP, XP and Vista on separate disks and be able to choose the OS at boot-time . . .

[Blue_MiSfit]

No problem :)

Sounds like a slightly clunky system, but if it floats your boat, more power to you!

There's nothing inherently Vista-esque about your PC. There should be no problem installing XP or 2K. Whether or not there are drivers is another question.

If you updated your XP CD to SP2, why wouldn't you have a bootable CD?? Start over with nLite and integrate SP2 and the latest RyanVM update pack (this will include all recent Windows updates). It's easy and then you can avoid this business of starting off a floppy and praying that DOS plays along.

Now for an important question: Is you system running in ATAPI (Legacy IDE) or AHCI (native SATA) mode?

As I said, if you're in AHCI, XP and 2k won't see your hard drive(s) without AHCI drivers on the XP CD or a floppy - assuming your drive are SATA. In fact, you should have those handy regardless.

So, the easiest road IMO is to use nLite to integrate (in addition to SP2 and the update pack) your AHCI drivers. It's pretty easy. Then burn a bootable CD and use that to install. Should go without issues, even if you're running in Legacy mode.

Now, as to your lack of a Vista install disc... That sucks :)

Maybe your system recovery will let you burn a Vista DVD, but I kind of doubt it. It's probably a ghost image or something equivalent. You've got a Vista license, I don't think it's illegal to download a Vista CD image from P2P or otherwise. Don't quote me on that, it would just be the easiest solution and I think it's legal...

Good luck.

~MiSfit