HELP! HELP! HELP!

[Lunitixx]

I built my first computer today.

ECS K7s5a MOBO
1 gig Athalon
512 mb DDR 21oo
msi Nvidia geforce2 mx400

I got everything put together. Then I went to install Windows XP. It went through the whol partition and format and then it went through the whole install process. On the final re-boot it went through the boot process and then went straight to a black screen error message.

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or currupted:
\windows\system 32\config\system

I formatted ntsf by the way.
I spen an hour and a half on the phone with MS tech support and they basically said that it's probably a hardware issue. All the hardware seemes to register in the bios just fine.


Any ideas??? Has anyone heard of this problem before?

I am about ready to chuck this thing in the street.

 

[2336]

Wish I could help but I won't even think about WinXP! Try formatting FAT32 and then loading Win98SE. I bet it runs fine then!

 

[Lunitixx]

Are you saying that there is a problem with winxp? Is that too advanced of an OS for my setup?

 

[RustyNale]

I've heard of people having problems with the Geforce cards and WinXP, do you have another brand of video card that you can temporarily install to see it that's the problem?

 

[Hannibalnguyen]

did you try installing windows xp using a startup disk or did you do it straight from the cd........i had that problem of missing or corrupted file window/system32/hal.dll or something like that because i used a win 98 start up disk to start the installation instead of directly booting up for the cd-rom drive.......try that and let me know............

 

[Lunitixx]

Thanks for all the ideas. I went onto the motherboard forum and found out that there are major problems with a certain revision of that MOBO and using the T-bird processors.

Instead of messing with it anymore I just returned it and bought a MSI kt7apro2 and tried that. Of course that wouldn't load winxp either until I flashed the bios with the most recent bios and then it went on flawlessly.

Of course no it turns out that I really, really, really, don't like Windows XP. I'm glad I only paid $30 for it so I won't feel bad about erasing it and going to Win2k or 98se.