reinstalling XP

The first time I put my system together I installed win98 and upgraded to XP Pro. I was getting major random reboots problems. After about 2 days of messing with the thing, I reformatted the HD and left win98 on. It's been over 24 hours and not a single problem. I like Win XP Pro but afraid of going through that hell again. Is their anyway I could revert to Win98 without having to reformat and reinstall everything again if XP starts giving me problems again?

IMO, you're best bet would be to do a clean install of XP...instead of an upgrade over a previous version (as you found out, there's normally just too many problems with an upgrade...most of the time, as there are exceptions to the rule). To perform a clean install, you'll first need to set up your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM as the first boot device (normally found under "Advanced BIOS features" in the BIOS). After following the below instructions, and XP setup reboots...you'll need to re-enter the BIOS and change the boot order to "First Boot Device"...HDD-0 (or "SCSI" if running RAID), second would probably be your Floppy, and third would be your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

Read the End-User License Agreement, and then press F8.

If your XP CD is an upgrade, you're prompted to insert a CD of a previous OS to check for upgrade compliance. Remove the XP CD, and then insert the CD from your previous OS into the CD-ROM drive. Valid qualifying media for upgrade compliance includes: Win95\98\98SE\Me\NT 4.0\W2K Pro. When you receive a prompt for the XP CD, remove your previous OS CD, and then insert your XP CD.

To install XP by starting the computer from the XP CD, insert the XP CD into your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer. When you see the "Press any key to boot from CD" message, press any key to start the computer from the XP CD-ROM. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER to begin XP Setup. Follow the instructions on the screen to select and format a partition in which to install XP, then complete WinXP Setup.

Since I have the upgrade disk I thought I had to install win98 first and then upgrade. I also read that its best to set your FSB at 100 when installing XP. Any truth to that? Thanks for your reply.

You don't need to have a previous OS installed in order to install the XP upgrade, you just need to show the setup program that you have valid qualifying media for upgrade compliance.

There's no truth to the rumor that you need to set the FSB to 100 in order to install XP...unless that's what the chip's default FSB is. In your case, running an 1800+...just set the chip back to it's default of 133x11.5 (not overclocked). Sometimes when trying to install XP when in an OC'd state, you might run into problems...it's always best to reset the chip back to it's default clock speed during the install.

Ok, I tried to reinstall win xp and it started to reboot on its own again while it was installing. I didn't even let it finish so I'm back to 98. What upsets me most is not knowing what the problem is. Have any of you ever had this problem with xp?

During the installation of windows XP Im running pro here your going to reboot several times during the installation. I like to personally install it from a previous windows version. And to a clean advanceed installation as opposed to upgrade. The reason of doing this from a previous installation is so your connected to the internet and can use the updated setup files from microsoft. The most common hangup I see during the installation is after the first boot youll be prompted to hit f something to install raid or scsi drivers. Than while your walking thru the installation youll set up your partition and I recommend reformatting in the NTFS format, of course if you do so just remember there is a compatibility patch that makes some older games work correctly while under the xp ntfs enviroment. Ive installed XP on probably over 75 systems and have never had any problems. The most common from what I have seen of others is there Raid or scsi driver installation during the install, oc, or bios settings. As mentiond above you want the most stable system settings during os installation. Put the settings and clock down to default during the install.

I always set my bios to fail-safe when installing XP. The only thing I didn't do was make my partitions NTFS instead of FAT32.

At what point during the install does your PC reboot, and is there a blue screen at that point? If there is a BSOD before the PC reboots, what is the exact error message you're receiving? You should definitely not have to load Fail-Safe defaults in the BIOS before installing XP (if anything, you should load Optimized Defaults...especially if you're unsure of how some of the BIOS settings relating to your particular setup should be set). Before installing the OS, you should set up the BIOS using the preferred settings for your particular setup (other than the fact that the chip's clock frequency/voltage control settings should be set to their defaults).

What is BSOD? No I do not get any blue screen it just reboots with no error messages. I wierd thing is I installed it on another Computer that is identical to mine except for the video card, cdrw drive and his cpu is a different color (brown and mine is green I forget what the codes are) and his worked fine with no reboots.

I had random restarts due to driver issues on some machines. Make sure you get the newest drivers! Some of the windows drivers do not work correctly. Especially the on-board audio drivers. Boot into safe mode (with network support) and update your drivers.

When I was able to finish the install I updated all my drivers online through XP win update and still got the reboots. I've tried disabling auto restart on errors with XP but the computer still restarts on its own with no error messages. I think what makes me upset is that I don't know how to fix this problem. I don't really mind using 98 but XP looks a lot nicer. This is all I've done to try to fix the problem.

-changed video card
-removed SB live value and it's driver
-changed psu from antec 300w to 430w
-disconnected all case fans execept for radiator fans
-disconnected both cd rom drives
-tried 3 different memory sticks
-tried different power surge
-reformatted HDD a number of times

The only thing I didn't do was try a different CPU, MOBO or HDD. I must add that all compenents work perfect on 98SE. I also haven't tried NTFS vice FAT32 but don't think that would be a problem would it? I had one suggestion I didn't try and thats download new setup files when installing winxp. As you can see I've tried a lot of different things and still no positive results. Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Personally, I would make a separate partition for XP through fdisk or Partition Magic and install it there..
Take out all the PCI cards, disable the usb in the bios, and try the install..
Then go to the manufacturer's websites for driver updates..

Well I formatted the HDD, booted from an ME vice 98, Used advance setting on installation CD instead of update and converted my C: to NTFS. I've been running XP Pro now for 2 hours without a reboot. I hope that did it. Thanks for your replies.

Well it lasted a good 3 hours before I got my first reboot. I doubt its temp because my bios is reading 43d CPU 35 SYS. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!!!

You may want to try this...Start | All Programs | Administrative Tools (or Start | Administrator Tools) | Event Viewer. When Event Viewer opens up, you'll notice two panes...in the LH pane highlight "Application" and "System" individually (these are the error logs). Look for any RED colored errors in the RH pane (these are critical errors), and if any are found...right click each error and select "Properties". Under the "Description:" field will be a short description of the error, including an error code...please copy the error(s) descriptions and codes Exactly as they're displayed and post them in this thread (if a number of critical errors are displayed, we may want to work on only one or two of them at a time).

I had a total of 19! 1 on application and the rest on system. Most of the system ones had source coming from disk. Here's the first one on application.

"THE DESCRIPTION OF EVENT ID (1031) IN SOURCE (ASP.NET 1.0.3705.0 CANNOT BE FOUND. THE LOCAL COMPUTER MAY NOT HAVE NECCECARY REGISTRY INFORMATION OR MESSAGES DLL FILES TO DISPLAY MESSAGES FROM A REMOTE COMPUTER. YOU MAY BE ABLE TO USE THE /AUXSOURCE=FLAG TO RETRIEVE THIS DESCRIPTION; SEE HELP AND SUPPORT FOR DETAILS. THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS A PART OF THE EVENT 0X80040154.

Thats the first one. Thanks for your help.

In fact here are the other error messages in the system section and the number of times reported.

3 TIMES - THE HWINFO SERVICE FAILED TO START DUE TO THE FOLLOWING ERROR: THE SYSTEM CANNOT FIND THE FILE SPECIFIED.
2 TIMES - THE DRIVER DETECTED A CONTROLLER ERROR ON DEVICE\HARDISK0\D
14 TIMES - A PARITY ERROR WAS DETECTED ON \DEVICE\IDE\IDEPORT0

I'll buy you a case if you could solve the mystery

edit: I meant a case of beer.

In the BIOS, check to see if "PCI Master Read Caching" is enabled...if it is, disable it. I believe it can normally be found under the "CPU & PCI Bus Control" section. When you get back to your desktop, open up Event Viewer | Right click "System" in the LH pane | Select "Clear all events" | You'll then be asked if you want to save "System" before clearing it? (it's up to you if you want to save a copy of the log or not). Reboot, and then recheck the "System" log file to see if any further critical errors have been logged.

I would also suggest checking to make sure you have the latest BIOS revision for your board (which I believe is version 9K), which can be found at Abit's site here...

http://www.abit.com.tw/abitweb/webjsp/english/download_content.jsp?pTITLE=KX7-333+/+KX7-333R&#Bios

...if you have the original 7M BIOS, I would suggest flashing to the newest 9K revision.

There's also an option in the BIOS to enable/disable APIC (I believe it's supposed to read ACPI-"Advanced Configuration Power Interface", but in all the threads I've read about this option and the KX7-333...everybody refers to it as APIC). Most people it seems have the best results with this option disabled, but it needs to be disabled before installing the OS. The following is a short explanation of "APIC" taken from Pual's Unofficial KR7 FAQ...

APIC mode within the BIOS changes the way in whcih IRQ's are handled by the system and allows more IRQ's for the system. However, if your machine becomes slow or unstable after enabling this, note that forcing an ESCD Update within the BIOS can help. Also note that you should only ever enable or disable this before installing your operating system, as it affects how it is configured (with NT4, Windows 2000, WindowsXP and some up-to-date Linux distributions). The operating system cannot cope with this setting being changed after installation and may become unstable or unbootable.

Click to expand...

Here's a link to a thread over at the Icrontic forums with regards to this BIOS setting and the KX7-333...

http://www.icronticforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30853&highlight=KX7+APIC

Also, regarding the KX7 manual and DIMM slots...it appears as though the printed manual mistakenly labeled the Dimm's in the incorrect order. The new manual which is available in pdf format has the correct order listed which is DIMM 1,2,3,4 in that order. You can get it here...

ftp://ftp.abit.com.tw/pub/download/fae/

Ok the bios settings you described have been set like that so I don't think that was the problem. I don't know if I mentioned that I don't get a single reboot in 98se only in XP Pro. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the memory because the PSU is a new Antec 430w. I'm going to raise the ddr voltage to the max (2.85) to see if that helps. Thanks for your reply.