Help please. Dip switches and mach 3 settings

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi Rob.
At this point I can only exclude one problem at a time, and each modification requires money in a form or another. Not my favorite approach, but that.s how it is.
I think I just ˇˇresolvedˇˇ the desktop pc, as I did try installing windows xp sp3 x86 on a separate partition, and it failed at first attempt, and then it seemed to go through, and now the pc would not load anymore. I can.t even get into Bios. It loads the first screen, and it stays like this forever. I can press Del for setup and it says it is entering setup but nothing happens, and with Tab the same thing, and f8 for Bbs popup which does nothing as well.


I installed really hard windows 7 as well a while ago. It just failed so many times, but I could repeat the process. Now I can.t. Only dvds seems to work, no usb or sd.

[john swift]

which is the boot drive ?


try booting the PC with no drives connected
and see if you can get into the bios

If you can
try connecting the DVD drive and see if it will boot from the windows installation disk

if that works
next try adding the IDE drive

and then the crucial solid state drive


if all 3 drives are connected to the IDE ribbon cables

you can only connect one master and one slave to each cable


it looks like all three drives are set to master !

if you have two master devices on one IDE ribbon cable
that could stop the motherboard from booting and take a very long time to respond to attempts to boot in to the bios

do you have 3 IDE ports ?

John

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi John,
I.ve changed in Bios the boot drive to be the dvd drive, right before installing.
I.ll try tomorrow what you.ve just said in removing all things and testing.
I don.t know what an IDE drive is or how many ports I have.
Here.s a photo with the motherboard.

[cropwell]

That Mobo has 4 SATA and 1 IDE port. The IDE port will support two devices and I would recommend you use Cable Select on the IDE drives look at this ---- https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/bph03792 With Cable select the master is the first drive i.e. on the end cable connector and the slave is on the middle connector
SATA does not have that option and I see that the small drive cable tied to the box is SATA.

If you can set up XP on a separate drive, I would recommend it and don't mess about with dual booting. It looks as though you have a corrupt MBR (Master Boot Record).

The Mobo manual is here if you need it https://www.dropbox.com/s/vmr7ucg4kw..._1333.pdf?dl=0

[john swift]

this photo lead me to think your PC had IDE drives
connected by a 40 way ribbon cable



your later photo of the motherboard shows the newer (red) SATA cable connected to the solid state drive




as your mother board is the E3363_P5GC-MX_1333

it only has SATA ports



so you can ignore my comment about only having
a master & a slave device connected to a 40 way ribbon cable

just test the motherboard with no drives
then add one drive at a time to see if you have a faulty drive
stopping the board from booting

John

[cropwell]

as your mother board is the E3363_P5GC-MX_1333

it only has SATA ports

so you can ignore my comment about only having
a master & a slave device connected to a 40 way ribbon cable

Although the photo does not make it clear, that Motherboard has an Ultra DMA IDE port and from the BIOS start-up screen, it looks as though Andrei has an 80way cable with a HDD and a CD-Rom connected, both plugged up on the jumpers as Masters. As I said CS (cable select) is a safer way to go. If XP has been installed on the SSD, then I would unplug the IDE HDD and see if it boots up. Although you may have to alter boot priority in the BIOS settings.

[Radu_Andrei]

Hi.
Here.s another photo with the Mobo. Maybe it clarifies some things.

So I did remove the hard drive and it alllowed me to enter the Bios, so I deleted everything from the hard drive and started a new installation of windows xp sp3 x86.
It failed the first time, but went ok. ish the second time. After installing everything, I just got a black screen with Error loading operating system.
So I.ve burned anothed dvd with Recovery Essentials Windows XP and ran that, and applied an automated fix and I could start the PC.
I.ve got this two errors in the process and I have no ideea what they mean.


Regarding the IDe settings, here.s a photo with the Bios

I.m searching now for some drivers, as in XP device manager, under Other Devices, I don.t have any driver.
I.ve found a cd with xp drivers for win xp, but there are so many, so I need to figure out which ones are the right one. For example, in LAN drivers I.ve got Atheros, Broadcom, Intel, JMicron, Marvell, Realtek, VIA.
I did this things many years ago, so I guess they.ll come back to me.

At least, now I have available the Standard PC option in device manager, so I can change the energy management of this unit. We.ll see if it works when I.ll get there.