K7S8X - Can't get OS to boot on ASRock mboard

[CustardCrumble]

I'm new to this game but not a technophobe so decided to build pc. I bought ASRock's K7S8X mbo and AMD Athlon 2400XP with recommended heatsink and fan. Also got 512kB DDR RAM. I have the bus speed set to 133.

I originally had Win95 on the hdd but formatted this and tried to load XP pro. The machine gets as far saying it's loading Windows and does not go any further.

Eventually I tried installing the OS through another machine on to the same hdd but now I get an error msg saying that either I need new drivers (I've got nothing else installed) or my bios needs updating (but it's a brand new mbo + cpu)

Any ideas what's going wrong? Please help!

[RedFury]

Well, for one, you usually won't have much luck installing to another machine and swapping out the HDD unless that machine has the same Motherboard. If you are having difficulty installing an OS onto a new machine, make sure that the BIOS is testing that RAM, not just quick booting. I spent 8 hours into the wee hours trying to install Win98SE on a machine with a bad stick of RAM. It would install to a point, then stop altogether. Finally, at wit's end, I check the bios and sure enough, as soon as I disabled fast boot it found my RAM to be bad. New RAM, had the OS installed in 26minutes flat. What a waste of time. Like they say, Keep it Simple Stupid. Check the obvious stuff before you look for the obtuse.

[vaktaren]

Originally posted by CustardCrumble
I originally had Win95 on the hdd but formatted this and tried to load XP pro. The machine gets as far saying it's loading Windows and does not go any further.

I have the same problem, not with that motherboard however but with the Asrock K7VT2, slightly different problem but somehow alike. I get as far as you, but only if u have 2 mems installed, not when i only have 1. It also works fine with Win98 but not with XP. I have tried absolutely everything when it comes to solving this problem. And have checked alot of forums for answers, i have mailed Asrock, and talked to my reseller. The only thing i have actually managed to figure out is that this is a big problem with the Asrock MoBo. Many others have reported the same problem(with the same MoBo that im using that is) havent exactly kept my eyes open for other MoBo´s with the same problem before. What i can say is, that it might be a bios problem, at least that was what asrock thought when they finally answer my mail(took 5 months...). They sent me a bios that was not on their webpage and i guess, hoped it would work. It didn´t however.

Check if you can find a bios update for your MoBo, risky bussines but for as far i can tell (and most people i have asked) that is the only way to go, at least with this problem.

Here is the e-mail adress to Asrock support: asrock_tsd@asrock.com.tw

hope at least that helps some...=)