??? Mother board???

Help, I am bashing my head against the wall. I am about ready to bash the computer against the wall.

I am building a computer for my grandson. The problem I have is I can't load windows on the system.

I have tried 2 motherboards, 4 cd-rom drives, 2 hard drives, 2 sets of ram dimms and 2 power supplies.

The problem is the same with all combinations, The setup disk loads the installation files, formats the hard drive and when it gets to the file copy routine it hangs up on a file transfer. It is not the same file each try. I have tried 4 versions of win xp 32, win vista 32, and Ubuntu. Ubuntu will not even format the disk.

Thank you for your help.

Dave

PS: if I have posted to the wrong forum, I appologise. Please direct me to the right place.

what are the specifications of your computer? are you using a genuine copy of the os?

Intel Mobo 845 chip set? 1024 Mb Pc133 4 different CD/DVD rom P-4 1.6g CPU Maxtor 120gb HD seagate 160gb HD GE Force 4400 Video.

Yes. I have genuine windows and ubuntu. All work on my primary computer as do the cd drives and hard drives.

Thanks for the help.

Dave

There are a number of possible causes:

You started Setup from DOS mode.

You loaded the SMARTDrive tool and you used the following switches:
/x
/c
/l
InitCacheSize
WinCacheSize
/E:1024

You did not load Smartdrv.exe prior to running Winnt.exe.

To workaround the issue, run the smartdrv command without any switches.

NOTE: You may have to modify your Autoexec.bat file.

Thanks for the response Einstein 007.

That fix might work for older versions of windows, but Win XP has no autoecec.bat file and no smartdrive on the installation cd. How do I get the file and how do I install it without installing XP first?

Dave

Faulty memory or overclocked processor, we've had this in the labs many times. Just clock the processor down to its stock speed and the problems should go away. If not the memory could be at fault. But the obvious suggestion would be to check the CD for defects and/or try a different CDROM/DVD drive.