MEGA 180 hates me.

[CaseyTheBrash]

I just put a MEGA 180 together the other day and I can not, for the life of me, get this thing to install windows. I've used two different Sony drives and MSI claims you can only get away with using a MSI optical drive, but in almost every build of this system I've seen I never seen a MSI drive listed as a chunk-o-hardware. Now that we have the drive thing out of the way...

The BIOS recognizes anything I put in it, all the components and drives seem to be happy where they are. I've used default settings, safest settings, optimal, and tweaked them all myself. No dice on the BIOS not being happy.

Next I'll throw in a OEM Windows XP Home, it detects, scans, and formats the drive, then...17-28 percent in on the install claims it did not copy whatever fiel it's at properly and the image on the disk is not a valid Microsoft blah blah blah. It also says my setup files are not a valid image. Ok, so I use my copy of Pro, then my roomies, same thing. At various points it always chokes up and sometimes I even get a nice Blue Screen of Death.

Now, I'm going to take MSI on it's word and get an MSI optical drive, one of their "suggested" ones that is supported for the little thing, but before I do, anyone else have any ideas? I've been hammering together comps with rocks for years now and never have I had this much "fun." Please, help an aging geek out. I'll go sob in the crapy manual that came with this little bareboned system now.

Oh it's got this;

AMD XP 2400+
512 stick of Corsair
Western Digital HD
Sony DVD burner and a Sony DVD/CD R/RW
Onboard Sound
Onboard Video
Onboard everything it has one PCI slot which has a TV Anywhere card waiting for it...

Thanks in advanced.

 

[endyen]

The windows disk gives an option to check system compatability. That would be the place to start.

 

[etp777]

Ram
CD Drive(rather unlikely as you've tried mroe than one)
IDE cable(to cdrom or hard drive)
CPU/mobo
Media(unlikely as you've tried mroe than one

Those are in no particular order. a nd I guess the optical drive might be likely, according to MSI, but I'd try some other IDE cables and Memtest 86 before I gave them any of my money.

 

[CaseyTheBrash]

Thanks gents, I ordered a MSI optical drive, cross your fingers, all the other components work in other comps with the exception of the mobo. The cables are "built" in the case as well...so if this doesn't fix it, it's all going back.