Tech Gods We Summon Thee

Hello, ok here's my situation, my father in law was given a custom built pc three years ago that's basically an Asus A8N-SLI Premium with a AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core running XP Pro, more specs to be posted in a sec.

They get a nasty worm I can't clean out, unlike the countless viruses I've removed for them for free going on years now. No time this round, and the worm is serious.

So I backup their drive, wipe it with Boot and Nuke, and Clone XP Home 32bit fully updated onto it from a 1TB, which is 100% clean running perfectly, set up with NOD32.


Presto, the clone goes perfectly, like unknown times I've done it before.
I hook it up to their PC, it gets to the XP loading screen, and reboots, endlessly.

I start it in safe mode, no problem, I run a plethora of tests, everything's fine.

I remove everything but the ATI Radeon card, the mouse/kb, the try again, same thing, wont get past XP load screen.

I connect two other perfectly functioning SATA drives, and same thing, wont get past XP load.

OK.

I wipe the drive again, partition/format, install Windows ME for the hell of it with their drive attached to their PC.
All is going well, then right after the first reboot and loading the OS for the first time, BANG, same thing, auto reboot at loading screen.


Memory problem I think, so I order new sticks ( 2 512mb 184-pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (pc 3200) ), start it up after installing, and you guessed it, boots into safe mode no problem, but reboots endlessly right as the Windows load screen pops up.



My last step was going to be buying a new HD, but since it wont boot on any of the perfectly operating drives I've tried, all having the exact same instant reboot issue at the OS load screen, it's a slim shot.


I'm nearing the point of just buying them a new PC, because I don't have the time for this.


But if any of you more advanced in this then me have anything to offer that I've missed or any ideas, I would welcome it.


Some specs taken while backing up their old drive before wiping it:

Quote:

Monitoring ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mainboard Model A8N-SLI Premium (0x000004DB - 0x0083C5A4) DMI ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DMI BIOS vendor Phoenix Technologies, LTD version ASUS A8N-SLI Premium ACPI BIOS Revision 1302 date 04/12/2006 DMI Baseboard vendor ASUSTeK Computer INC. model A8N-SLI Premium revision 1.02 serial 123456789000 DMI Processor manufacturer AMD model AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ clock speed 2200.0 MHz FSB speed 200.0 MHz multiplier 11.0x DMI Memory Controller correction 64-bit ECC Max module size 1024 MBytes Processors Information ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Processor 1 ID = 0 Number of cores 2 (max 2) Number of threads 2 (max 2) Name AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Codename Toledo Specification AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ Package Socket 939 CPUID F.3.2 Extended CPUID F.23 Brand ID 5 Core Stepping JH-E6 Technology 90 nm Core Speed 2211.5 MHz Multiplier x FSB 11.0 x 201.0 MHz HT Link speed 1005.2 MHz Stock frequency 2200 MHz Memory SPD ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DIMM # 2 banks SMBus address 0x50 Memory type DDR Manufacturer (ID) Corsair (7F7F9E0000000000) Size 512 MBytes Max bandwidth PC3200 (200 MHz) Display Adapters ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Display adapter 0 Manuf. API index 0 Display name \\.\DISPLAY1 Name ATI Radeon X1050 Memory size 256 MB PCI device bus 1 (0x1), device 0 (0x0), function 0 (0x0) Vendor ID 0x1002 (0x174B) Model ID 0x5B63 (0x3000) Performance Level 0 Display adapter 1 Display name \\.\DISPLAY2 Name ATI Radeon X1050 Secondary Memory size 256 MB PCI device bus 1 (0x1), device 0 (0x0), function 1 (0x1) Vendor ID 0x1002 (0x174B) Model ID 0x5B73 (0x3001) Performance Level 0 Chipset ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Northbridge NVIDIA nForce4 rev. A3 Southbridge NVIDIA nForce4 MCP rev. A3 Graphic Interface PCI-Express PCI-E Link Width x16 PCI-E Max Link Width x16 Memory Type DDR Memory Size 1024 MBytes Channels Dual Memory Frequency 201.0 MHz (CPU/11) Software ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows Version Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (Build 2600) DirectX Version 9.0c

Any help is appreciated.

Have you tried disabling the automatic restart on failure? It might give you a clue as to what's going on. Here's how to do it.

Disable automatic restart on system failure. This should help by allowing time to write down the STOP code properly. Right click on the My Computer icon on the Desktop and select Properties, Advanced, Start-Up and Recovery, System Failure and uncheck the box before Automatically Restart.

This is a vague thought that I'm not sure is applicable, but ... is there any chance that the SATA drives may require a 3rd party driver in order to run properly? (i.e., one that the OS's you've tried do not have as a standard HDD driver)... I don't think it would actually blue screen with that situation (it shouldn't get that far) but ... who knows?

However, what Bluemeanie says is what you should try ... boot to safe mode, disable the Automatically Restart on error thingie, and see what the BSOD message and/or code is. If you google the code or title of the message, you might find some more ideas.

Good luck!

Storm

Definitely sounds like a hardware fault or driver problem to me. Safe Mode uses a fairly basic set of drivers and only initializes a minimal amount of the hardware to get things running. So your likely culprit is something like the sound or network which don't usually get turned on in safe mode. You might try removing, disconnecting or otherwise turning off all components and such not absolutely required for system functionality and see if it boots then. If it does, then it should be a simple process of elimination to determine which bit is the troublemaker. If it doesn't, then at least you've eliminated some of the contenders.

What error are you getting? Knowing that might prove helpful too.

The error is 0x0000007E, now it is an HP cloned to the Asus mobo, which shouldn't matter I don't think, from past experience.

I took the ATI Radeon card off and replaced it with a functioning spare Nvidia card, because the ATI wouldn't accept the correct Catalyst driver, it said there was no hardware that matched the drivers, which is wrong, so I switched to the Nvidia card, and it wont update either.


It's a good mobo, so I hate to just throw in the towel on it, but I'm inching ever closer.

Thanks again for the help.

I'm sure you did this, but have you tried resetting the bios? Usually a jumper on the motherboard. You might want to write down all the settings before you do this tho.

This is an HP copy of Windows? Aside from the licensing issues that likely make that illegal, the fact it's not a 'clean' OS may be a portion of your issue. System manufacturers incorporate extra drivers for their hardware into the OS build. It may be that one of those is interacting badly with some piece of hardware on the mobo or otherwise in the system and causing things to go screwy. Do you have an OEM or otherwise clean OS you can use? The system builder should have and was legally obligated by M$ to supply a copy of the OS that came on the system. That should be a clean version. (I assume it came pre-loaded.)

Yep mentioned in the OP that I tried the fresh install after wiping/partitioning/formatting, no go. So it's off to it's original builder it goes, because I have the interest and don't like being licked by a pc problem, but I don't have the free time to keep tinkering with it.

Thank you again for the replies.