Prepare to be stumped!!

[PLow]

Ok, I am building a new PC:
Thinderbird 1.1
Abit KT7A
256Mb Micron
40Gb Maxtor Hard drive
Pioneer 16X DVD
Geforce 2
Heres the problem: Everything boots, detects fine and temp in A-OK (46*C). But I cant get Windows installed! I have 98 and ME, neither will install. Sometimes I get to scan disk and it crashes...Putting little smily faces, and other characters in random places. Sometimes, windows says it detects errors on the drive, even after a fresh fdisk and format. I ran the Maxtor PowerMax Diagnostic and the drive checked out ok! I tried swapping RAM..thats not the problem. I tried swapping out with a Western D. 13Gb...Mobo didnt even recognize it! AHHH, someone help before I jump out my window!!! Do I have a bad Mobo, Processor, bios, weasel pin, troposcan, or hard drive ( the HD is an RMA'ed pert because the first one was bad, not passing any of the diagnostic tools, however, this one passes them all!) Thanks for all the help in advance, it is REALLY appreciated!

 

[sadb0i]

did u activate the partition in fdisk?

 

[PLow]

YUP

 

[sad]

How's your powersupply? Maybe your system is not getting enough juice. If you're desperate, you can lower your multiplier to 7X or so and then try to install windows.

 

[Garet Jax]

Plow,

Is the drive setup as the master on the IDE channel?

 

[PLow]

Yes, hard drive is set up as master. It is a Maxtor 40GB DRACO. What the heck is DRACO? Thanks for the help..keep 'em coming!!!

 

[PLow]

I just tried using a standard ATA 33 cable to see if that made a difference. I booted up, went into DOS and started a scan disk. Instantly I got the following error!

RUN-TIME error R6003
integer divided by 0

Whats this all mean?

 

[gumbysucks]

My son had same thing setting up old ata 33 drive on PII 266 system .He had drive settings wrong in bios - had some real stupid smiley faces come up about the size of a zero. Hope this helps ya!

 

[btac]

Plow,
Are you setting up the hard drive in bios for auto detect or are you keying in the cylinder info? If you have been using the auto mode, try loading the info from the hard drive specs (on the drive)and see if it sees it correctly.