desperate help needed with installing WIN2K

[dude2]

hey, im kinda a newbie and trying to learn, so please try and help me with this!

i have been trying to install an OP for ages now! and have just got windows 2000. I managed to install windows 98 but that was problematic so i formatted my drives and and am trying the windows 2k installation. However im having problems... again!

I have two HDD, i have tried them both seperatly with the installation but the same problems occur. My HDD is on the same ribbon as my CD-RW drive. (thats the only cd drive i have connected). I run the setup, it loads the setup information etc etc, then it gets to the end of the loading information but, and then says its going to to run the actual win 2k setup but then it goes to a blue screen, and has:

*** STOP: 0x0000000A (0x48000080, 0x00000002, 0x00000001, 0x803A73EC)

*** Address 803A73EC base at 803A4000, DateStamp 381f8c6e - hal.dll

if this is your first time.... blah blah

Why am i getting these messages and why wont the actual setup of windows 2k run!?

i have a 20GB HDD 52000 and a 60GB 72000 - obviously i would like to set it up on the 60gb as its newer and faster so could anyone tell me how i can finally install a working OP on my pc!?

thanks soooooo much!

Jonny

(sorry for the corss thread but i didnt mean to put this in the general hardware section)

[Oni]

HAL.dll is the Hardware Abstraction Layer. It's having problems loading this DLL.

Look at your RAM first. Throttle it back to CL3 for maximum stability and try again installing Win2k.

If you're overclocked, you'll wanna bring that down to stock as well to see if it works.

Good luck!

[dude2]

hey,

i havnt touched anything, no setting on ram or cpu have been touched as i have been told that its best to install OP like that. I did just delete all partitions (1) and then i ran the sinatllation and got REGISTRY_ERROR - (same screen but different error)

is this getting further than the other error message?

where should i go from now?

thanks again!

[Oni]

I still think it's your RAM. Try a different stick, or if you're running multiple sticks, pull one and try it w/ only one stick

You might also wanna check your ribbon cable connections, or replace the cable.

[dude2]

ok, well i only have my new DDR ram, and i have just given my old SDRAM to a m8.

the thing is, every time i do something different, e.g. swap drives over (HDD) or delete the partitions etc i get a different error message, i have gone through about 4 now!

this leads me to beleieve that it might not be the RAM, what do you think!?

also, do you reckon that if i managed to install windows 98, then i put in the windows 2k cd and tried to run it, it would go smoothly? or would i have problems again, cause i wouldnt wanna re-format again - if it did go abit wrong! if i did install win98 - should i delete the partitions again, or create one first then run the setup?

any other things i should do before starting the win 98 ( that is of course if u think i should do it at all!)

thanks

Jonny


...... ps, just this minute i have run the setup again and it has frozen on the last step - it hasnt gone to the error screen this time - ill try again, but please rely to the above, thanks again!

[S_Wilson]

Go into your mainboard bios and you will probably find something that says Load Failsafe setting or bios defaults or something close to that, go ahead and load those. Just because you have not changed anything does not mean settings are not askew. You will have time to play and tweak these settings later after everything is running smooth.

I wouldn't try to upgrade win98 to win2k. If you have win98 installed then what I would do is copy the win2k disk to the other drive or a different partition on your boot drive then format the boot partition and install from the HD instead of CD. That would remove one link in the chain of possibilities, the CD rom. I am not familiar with your board, are you using the standard IDE ports or some other controller for you HD? If something else then use the standard IDE ports.

[o770]

im not sure whether this can be of any help in your case because there is nothing in your system that should cause you such problem, but if everything else fails then you should try to disable ACPI from the mainboard BIOS and try to re-run setup.
there is some more comprehensive information on the issue may you are experiencing here (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q216573&).

if you get running setup with ACPI disabled then you should think about flashing your mainboard BIOS - either with a newer version or not, because the reasons described in the article.

[Krieger]

Any NT OS is very picky about the hardware you are using. NT4 was a certifiable nightmare about this. I can't tell you how many headaches I got because of this. 2000 and XP are better, but some hardware may still cause it not to load properly. you might want to start with just a video card and ram. If it installs start to add hardware one at a time and see if that can resolve the problem. Also it might be a good idea to see if your harddrives have any bad sectors. that could be part of it as well.

~Krieger

[Arkaine23]

Run the HDD and cd-rom on separate cables. Just a guess, but the HDD is probably the slave to the cd-rom. Not sure if it'll help, but you're limiting the HDD by having it on the same cable anyway.

[bergie007]

Borrow a new Win2k cd from a friend. I had the same problem and I suspect it's your actual cd itself to blame. OR: copy your \i386 folder to disk and install from there - what I'm trying now! But a different cd (any cd, even a copy of yours) *should* work.