I just got a new motherboard, the Asus Crosshair. I decked it out with a shiny new AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 6000+, and 2 Gigs of GSKill DDR2 800. Imagine my surprise when after installing all the hardware the Windows XP Pro installer continuously crashes with a few % left on the install. Not once or twice, but four times in a row. Talk about frustrating!
I just got a new motherboard, the Asus Crosshair. I decked it out with a shiny new AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core 6000+, and 2 Gigs of GSKill DDR2 800. Imagine my surprise when after installing all the hardware the Windows XP Pro installer continuously crashes with a few % left on the install. Not once or twice, but four times in a row. Talk about frustrating!
So I have the machine all up and running now, and thought that I would share what I had learned in case someone else gets this motherboard and encounters the same issues. First off don’t blame the installer or futz with the hardware. Check and make sure that you have done the following:
- check the RAM. Just because the manual says A1 and A2 are together, make sure that you have your two sticks of RAM in A1 and B1. Putting them in that way insures that your getting your 128bit interface. This is the culprit that was causing the installer to crash for me.
- Pull the cap off the 2×4 (8 pin) 12v connector and make sure its full. Dual core processors require it.
- If you have all kinda of crazy blue LEDs lit on your motherboard… check the button on the backpanel labeled LED SW. Push it. The board will not POST (or power up at all) if they are lit.
- Lastly, if you notice that you have to redo all your Bios settings every time you reboot, and repeatedly get a CMOS Checksum Error… replace the BIOS Battery. Apparently the one that came with my shiny new mobo was DOA. Luckily I had a couple laying around the house.
I’ll write more about my new machine later once I play with it all some more.