bad gigabyte mobo or ram?

[baldbrad]

Hello all,first off i want to say that i have built a few systems before,last one was about 2 years ago.

Ok,that out of the way,heres the problem.

I built my friend a new system, GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3 LGA 775 Intel P965,E4300, Patriot Signature Series 2gb 667,WD 160 gb sata hd and a nivida 7950 gt.

Everthing went together fine,booted up just fine,read all 2 gb of mem,went into bios,set sata to Sata IDE since i was only usinging 1 sata drive,saved an exited.

Inserted my xp pro install disk,formated HD,it installed the system files,but when it went to install the OS i got a blue screen informing that "Windows has encountered a problem and is shutting down to prevent any damage,remove any new HD's,HD controllers you might have installed and run chkdsk"

I figured that maybe i had set the wrong option for the sata controller in bios,so i went in and set it to ACHI,i made my sata driver floppy,started fresh install.

I pressed F6 to install sata driver,was informed that windows had a sata driver that i could use,so i didnt install the sriver,NADA same blue error screen.

So i started over pressed f6 tried installing the sata driver,but got an error saying /Jraid.sys could not be open,error 512.

I figured the floppy was was bad,tried another,same problem.error 512.

By now im pulling my hair out,i call Gigabyte,tell me to update bios,i do,same problem.

I tried ever sata port on the board,no go on all of them.

I RMAed the board back newegg,went with a different one.

But as i sat here after sending the board back i'm wondering,was it the board,or the ram?i didnt think to test the ram with Memtest and my board i have atm only supports ddr2.

Can bad ram cuase the problems i was having?

I know the HD is not bad becuase i installed in my other computer and it was detected and was able to install xp just fine on it.

It is my understanding that if you choose Sata IDE in bios that there is no need for a 3rd party sata controller.

Did i send a perfectly good board back?

thank you for reading a windy post

[Rytr]

For peace of mine it's always best to check your ram with something like memtest86 but I would make a guess that something was not right with your harddrive setup or the drive itself.
You seldom have to do much of anything with a harddrive install, just plug it in. No more fooling with jumpers for master or slave but harddrives can still create problems due to bad connections, faulty cable, or even format.
Not to say that it was not the motherboard because they can be a pain but you have elected to rememdy that already. Hope the new one works for you.

[baldbrad]

first thing ill do when i get the new mobo is test the ram,as far as the something being wrong with the HD,like i said it worked in my other Comp,and i tried all the sata plug ins on the giga S3 board,plus all the sata options in Bios.

So hoping it's just the mobo.

[Rytr]

Hopefully it was the motherboard since you are getting a replacement. If it does happen again and the ram is good do a low-level format of the drive.

[baldbrad]

That is a new term for me,low-level format.how is that different than doing a format when installing a new HD and how do i do it?

The format i always choose is the NFTS one(not the quick one)

[Rytr]

Should be able to find a program at the mfg's site to check the harddrive. Low-level just puts zeros and ones on the drive.

[jcniest5]

How big is your hard drive? For bigger hard drive, go in the BIOS and set the Access Mode for this drive to Large (don't set it to Auto). See if that helps...