X25-m and Win XP issues

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 3:24 pm

So i finally broke down and got an SSD to replace my HDD's. I'm trying to install win xp (32bit) sp2. I started with my oldest machine first.

At first everything went smooth. Started installing drivers and then i ran into a problem. After updating my motherboard drivers to the latest version (via nvidia website) the computer refused to boot. It hangs at the windows logo screen. At first i thought it was the driver causing issues since it worked fine when i just used the drivers that came with the motherboard on the CD. I tried to uninstall the drivers and install the old ones but it kept stalling.

Then i just gave up, formated the SSD again and started over. This time just sticking with the drivers on the CD. But then after installing the monitor/video card drivers it starts doing other strange things. The windows logo screen hung for about 10 seconds longer than normal, then this strange login screen pops up. Not the normal one, it has the old windows classic border. When i click OK, explorer doesnt load and it gives me an error "userinit.exe - bad image" "blah blah winspool.drv blah blah". I opened up task manager with ctrl-alt-del, and tried to open explorer through it and it gave me another, similar but different error.

At this point i start thinking maybe its the SSD. I did a search on google for the error i got and all the pages that came back related to virus and malware issues. Well unless someone hacked nvidia's website theres no way i downloaded a virus. Its a fresh install of windows xp pro sp2, and the only thing i downloaded was the driver off nvidia's website, and the driver for my monitor off the viewsonic website.

I did a search on google for xp install issues x25-m, and found some posts on forums talking about aligning the partition, and that vista and win7RC both do this automatically but not xp. Also saw one site talk about going into BIOS and changing the SATA mode to IDE compatable. I went to BIOS and saw no such option. The only SATA options are to enable or disable RAID. Im not using raid. I suppose i could download win7-RC, but id really like to figure out how to get this to work with winxp Pro.

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. The one bright lining to this dark cloud is i disconnected my old hard drive, so i can just plug it back in and still have this computer work till i figure out a way to get this new SSD to work on it.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 3:38 pm

What motherboard do you have?

flyingsherpa · Post by **flyingsherpa** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 3:56 pm

Aris wrote: Also saw one site talk about going into BIOS and changing the SATA mode to IDE compatable. I went to BIOS and saw no such option. The only SATA options are to enable or disable RAID. Im not using raid.

Was your previous drive PATA? I had an issue when I switched from PATA to SATA where the drive wasn't being correctly recognized. Turns out, even though I'm not using RAID either, I had to enable RAID in the BIOS to get the SATA controller to work properly. Perhaps your motherboard is the same. If you see an option for AHCI in there, that can also cause weird issues when installing windows... disable it until everything is installed.

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Sun Jun 21, 2009 4:02 pm

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (MS-7125)
AMD Athlon 64 2ghz
2x 1gb DDR (dual channel)
Nvida Geforce 7600gs

No my old hard drive is SATA.

I see no options that mention anything about AHCI

It boots fine into safe mode. Would disabling the page file do anything?

Aris · Post by **Aris** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 4:52 am

Does anyone know anything about this "aligning the partition" thingy?

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 5:41 am

Aris wrote:Does anyone know anything about this "aligning the partition" thingy?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929491 gives you the basic steps. Just treat instances of "stripe size" as though they said "ssd erase block size" which for the X25-M is 512k or 0.5MB though it wouldn't hurt anything to do the 1MB option as shown in the MSFT kb.

I'm not sure if you can do that from the command line from the setup CD or if you have to have a valid copy of windows on another drive to do it (but I'm assuming you have a working XP system to do it from)

The alignment process is why I don't recommend RAID 5 on XP/Server 2003. Too many people don't know about it, don't do it right, or are too lazy to do it once they know about it (put me in the lazy camp when it comes to doing it the MSFT way as per that KB article though that might change if I get an SSD and stay on XP)

Of course if you like you could make the partition with a live linux CD, a Vista CD, or Server 2008 CD and then stop the install after the partition is created. Doing it that way you at least get a user interface that is friendlier to some if you want simple.

The XP installer will reuse an existing NTFS partition so long as it is either under 137GB or your XP installer has SP 1 or higher baked in.

It is worth mentioning though that only the command line in linux gives you full control over the process. http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/02/20/ ... lock-size/ gets heavy into the options with the x25 in mind and the comments have a serious low level discussion of options and the state of the industry.

and after all that I don't know if the issue you are seeing is related to partition alignment. Good luck on sorting it out and let us know what happens.

alleycat · Post by **alleycat** » Mon Jun 22, 2009 8:48 am

Here's a link to a similar guide that I used for my OCZ Vertex. You can use any of the offsets listed there. I tried both 128 sectors and 1024 sectors, and I couldn't tell the difference. It also includes a link to download the diskpar utility. I'm going to try Windows 7, apparently it takes care of everything anyway.

dhanson865 · Post by **dhanson865** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 5:30 am

Any news Aris? I hope you got the problem fixed but I'm curious to know how you fixed it.

confusion · Post by **confusion** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 8:11 pm

Intel has a FAQ page here:
http://www.intel.com/support/ssdc/hpssd ... 029623.htm

The wording is vague to me, but about halfway down it says:

Is the Intel SSD a drop-in replacement for SATA Hard Disk drives?
Yes. The Intel SSD a drop-in replacement provides rugged, reliable performance at lower power. Intel SSDs support the ATA-7 command sets and the SATA II command extensions. AHCI must be supported and enabled by both the system BIOS and OS (May require F6 installation of compatible windows storage driver like IMSM. Note: Vista AHCI support is native)

I think that means AHCI is required, but it may just mean for it to work it needs OS and BIOS support?

I've been looking at this myself today because I'm considering an X25 for an Intel DP43TF board with XP, but this board has the plain ICH10 (no RAID support) and AHCI is not supported in XP on this version of the ICH.

I don't know if the K8N Platinum has AHCI support or not, I checked MSI's site but didn't find it very helpful; in XP to use AHCI requires the F6/floppy install method or some other way of getting a compatible driver during the text part of the OS install; otherwise you'll typically get a BSOD.

Given the OP's different errors it may be something else entirely, and I may be misinterpreting the Intel page. Anyone else used an X25-M or X25-E in XP that can comment on AHCI?

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Wed Jul 22, 2009 11:50 pm

First of all I`d try a bios reset. I`d also try running the sata controller in raid mode.

I wonder though, how was this behavior triggered? Was the second windows setup different than the first in any way including the video drivers? The video drivers might seem irrelevant but you never know..

Some older sata I controllers don`t play nice with newer (sata II) devices though the fact that it worked the first time means there is hope.

X25-m and Win XP issues

X25-m and Win XP issues

Re: X25-m and Win XP issues