Boot errors, Vista problems, popping X-Fis...

Sovereign · Post by **Sovereign** » Fri Jun 15, 2007 10:04 pm

I've installed Vista at least twenty times today. Literally. Not making this up. First install was a x64, which crashed and burned because my X-Fi, SLI and 4GB RAM can't play nicely.

Second install was actually XP. However, it got to about 5% of copying files, then insisted that a certain file WOULD NOT COPY from my flawless original XP disc that I keep for just such a purpose.

After that, the XP install does the "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration" and then gives me a lovely black screen from which 15 minutes of waiting produce exactly nothing.

Vista installs fine (apparently) but after completing all steps and rebooting, it just gives me a black screen with a cursor in the corner. I've formatted ten times, tried four times to load nVidia Vista drivers I extracted onto a USB memory stick and run CHKDSK twice.

I've used the automated boot recovery from my Vista DVD. I've flashed three different BIOSes to my A8N32-SLI Deluxe. PLEASE do not tell me my mobo is bad, I just spent a month waiting for a new one. This computer is the machine from hell. Everything I try makes something else go wrong. HELP!

Post by **DMB2000uk** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:43 am

Memory problems?

It recognising the RAM voltages, timings and speed properly? If it is get memtest and check that.

Dan

Sovereign · Post by **Sovereign** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 8:51 pm

Well here's the thing.

My friend and I put my hard drive into his machine, and then installed Vista x64. It booted fine on his hardware. So we swapped the drive back into mine and after the BIOS/RAID screens we get this black screen with a little underscore-cursor in the upper left hand corner.

So we put his hard drive into my machine (to see if the mobo was bad or if I had a flaky SATA port, or power connector) and his install booted fine. So it can't be the drive itself or the mobo itself. Oddly, I can install and boot Vista on my RAID0 array, and use its boot manager to force a continuation of the Vista setup I tried to run on the Raptor. However, I still get this lovely black screen when I try to boot from the Raptor. Yes, the BIOS is set with the Raptor as first boot device.

The RAM all works, we memtested etc. If I try to boot the new Vista install, I just get a black screen after the OS choices menu. (There is an install of Vista on each drive now)