Operating system on mw-520

[baltor]

I'm having a hard time getting an operating system installed on a batch of mw-520's. Win 2k pro hangs at "detecting hardware". XP hangs at "installing files". I've tried everything - anyone else have any problem with this? These are f5203a's with 10 gig HDD's. Frustrating. I'm sure its something I'm either doing wrong, or not at all... but cant figure it out for the life of me.

[baltor]

btw - got these up and running by ghosting the drive of the 1 working machine. They work great now!

[Radionut54]

I am seeing exactly the problem described, but do not have the ability to ghost another working drive. Any ideas how to get past the stall described?

Thanks.

[Pj]

Are you using a factory (Microsoft) CD, or a downloaded one? I have installed W2K and W2K Advanced server on these without any problems. I have come across some from other "sources" that have had install issues, but nothing but good luck with the factory ones.

[Radionut54]

I am using a factory Microsoft CD, however, the internal HD was wiped clean so I had to get some CD drivers to allow use of a USB CD-ROM under DOS. The process I am using is to xcopy the CD to the hard drive and then install from the HD.

Thanks for the help. Let me know if I should try anything else.

[Pj]

That could be it...or it may not be copying over a file or two. I have seen that.

Is your CD bootable? Later additions of the 5203 support CD booting, which makes life easier.

[Ariannus]

The cds that work, what service pack if any are they? I've tried it with Service Pack 2, which causes my USB cd-rom to disappear as soon as it enters text setup, and a service pack 4 cd that crashed at detecting hardware. When I copied the sp2 cd to the hard drive it also crashed. They aren't the retail holographic discs (I know I have one somewhere, but haven't been able to find it yet), but they are official downloads from my MSDN account.

[Pj]

My suggestion (and this normally works), is to throw the HD you want in the MW, into another laptop (that boots with a CD drive), and let the OS do its inital file copy. Do not let it reboot to finish the install. When its done copying files, place it back in the MW and let it do its thing. I have gotten this to work several times. This was with XP, and 2k (no service packs) and Win98.

[Ariannus]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I wasn't having any luck when I installing on another computer earlier, it would just hang at boot, but it's worth another shot. I was able to get XP to successfully install, but I'd much rather install 2000. Not to mention I'd have to buy a new license for XP.

[Ariannus]

I've found a solution for the problem where 2000 hangs while installing devices. When the Windows 2000 installer first starts up it will say "Press F6 you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver". Instead press the F5 key which will bring you to the computer type selection screen. Pick "Standard PC" and then go through the install as normal.

The problem appears to be with the ACPI driver. The ACPI functions won't work, but I'm going to look into getting it working and post an update.