SATA2 HDD

PfhorRunner

Alright, So I was putting this computer together for a friend this weekend.

AMD Athlon 64 4000+
1 gig of Corsair XMS RAM
ASRock Dual SATA2 Mobo Socket 939
EVGA 7800GT PCI-E
SATA2 3.0gb/s Seagate HD

Well, everything hardware works... I think. When I tried to install Windows (yeah i know ) it tried it, then said there was an error. I realized that it didn't recognize that the HD was SATA2, and fixed that in the bios. I tried to install it again, and it went just fine, installed everything just peachy.
Now when you try and start the rig, it posts, and starts to boot windows, and then has a stop error and says that one of the files is corrupted. I tried reinstalling windows once again, but it won't boot from the disk, i've tried everything, and it just won't. So really I have no clue what the problem is, but all I know is that from my current knowledge i don't know how to fix this stop error.

Any suggestions?

EarthQuake

did you try flashing bios?

PfhorRunner

Well no, mainly because if it were mine, i'd have no problem. But this kid just spent a lot of money and i dont want to fry his mobo... Plus, I really don't see that that would get me anywhere.
I have essentially the same system, except for two gigs of RAM and an IDE HD, and that works perfect. So I don't really think its the bios there.

KDR_11k

Wasn't there some problem with Windows not being able to boot from SATA2 in older versions?

Downsizer

I do this for a living. And I've seen similar errors with that Mobo:

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=29&threadid=1784217

Flashing the bios wont fry the computer. I'm sure the manufactuer has a bootable flashing floppy image you can make. The only way you are going to damage anything, is if you turn power off while flashing. Even if you write the wrong flash image to it if it lets you, you can just write the correct one on newer model boards.

Flash the bios, see if ASUS has 3rd party drivers for windows xp OS install. Try safe mode, to see if it's not something else. If you can give me the stop error, i can trace it. Most of the time, it's not HD related.

Full format the drive, re-install windows, with the fastest sata2 setting as default.

EarthQuake

if you fuck up the bios just take out the battery and it will reset it to the orig.

PfhorRunner

Alright... So I figured out why It wasn't booting from the disk. Stupid me . I was using a USB keyboard, and so I decided out of desperation to try and use a PS/2, and that got to start booting from the disk... It did the "Press any key to boot from disk" and I guess the USB drivers aren't at that point working? I dunno, but the PS/2 keyboard works fine. It's formatting now, so I'll let you guys know how it goes.

Oh yeah, and Downsizer, Its not really freezing, it just stops loading and says one of the files is corrupted. All I needed was to reinstall windows, but couldn't.

And its not nforce...

sledgy

It looks like that might be an nForce4 mobo which has issues when you connect SATA-II (300MB/s) drives to them. See if the drive has a force-150 jumper on it or get ahold of Seagate and see if they have a firmware patch for the drive to crank it down. You could always get a Promise or SIIG SATA-II card to correct the problem too.