Nyah nyah I cant post :(

[Felix]

Well, I finally got a new psu, a leadman 400watt. I put that in, and started up. Symptoms are:

Usually, it goes thru post, gets to the end and freezes.
Occasionally it freezes during post.
Occasionally freezes in bios.
Occasionally doesnt even beep, just grey screen.

Occasionally it actually gets thru post fine, but I got a stop error. I figured hey theres nothing on the hd, I'll just reinstall windows.

I took the hd out and did the first part on another machine, copying the files over (floppy drive is semi-fubared). And then tried to boot with it on my machine.

Same problems. After trying repeatedly I got thru once, and got the message NTDLR is missing. It also spontaneously restarted during or before post a few times.

Behaviour is the same if I try to boot from a floppy.

The hd had just been formatted prior to installation. Ive loaded bios setup defaults many times.

Anyone have any idea what the problem could be? Id say the ntdlr is a different problem which I can probably fix, but I have no idea about it not posting.

Many thanks, Felix.

win2k pro (well trying to)
Athlon xp 1800 (cooled with thermaltake 7+)
asus kt333 mobo
256mb ddr kingbus ram
40gig ide seagate hd
leadtek gf4 ti4400

[AcurA]

tried clearing the bios 1st (with power lead off)?

[Felix]

You mean clearing cmos ram?

No, but it sounds like a good idea :) Will try.

[KingJackal]

got a new psu

Hmmm - DOA PSU? :confused:

[Felix]

Phew clearing cmos ram seems to have solved all the posting problems. Thanks!

[Wibber]

what was it like whit the old psu?

[Felix]

Not enough weetbix :) Icute 320watt. Random restarts which Im sure were due to the psu.

Also, Im having trouble with the ntdlr error. Its presumably because of the way Im trying to install win2k. I would do it normally, but I cant boot from a startup disk.

Ever since the comps been running, its had a weird floppy drive. Generally, it can read floppys that it has formatted, but no others, and other machines cant read floppys that it has formatted. I dont have access to any other machines that also had win2k on, so I couldnt test that. There was the occasional exception disk that read fine.

But, now I cant boot from a bootdisk that works fine on other machines, no doubt because it cant read it.

New floppy drive? Or do I need a win2k formatted disk to do it?

[AcurA]

boot with the win2k CD?

[KingJackal]

Dude - you should be able to boot from the 2K CD. Just set 'CD-ROM' as your primary boot device in the BIOS, and you should be sweet ;).

Heh, I don't even HAVE any floppy drives in this house, and I get along fine.... ( can't boot off my RAID, though :( )

[Felix]

Ahem. My win2k cd isnt bootable. I should be able to fix it at a friends place tho.

[AcurA]

must be a 'scratch'.... :P