Starting new thread as suggested- :wave:



History:
Barebone system components purchased from Tiger Direct:
1 CP2-P4-840 C Intel Pentium D 840 3.2GHz / 2MB Cache / 800 FSB / OEM / Socket 775 / Dual-Core / Processor
1 I69-2124 Intel D945GPMLKR Intel Socket 775 MicroATX Motherboard / Audio / Video / PCI Express / Gigabit LAN / USB 2.0 & Firewire / Serial ATA / RAID
1 S457-1034 Masscool 8W0141B1M3G / Socket 775 / Intel Prescott / Aluminum / CPU Cooling Fan
1 TSD-160H4 SY Hitachi 160GB Serial ATA w/NCQ 7200/8MB/SATA-3G
1 ULT31690 Ultra 1024MB PC4200 DDR2 533MHz Memory
1 ULT31841 Ultra / V-Series / 500-Watt / ATX / 120mm Fan / 20/24-Pin / SATA Ready / Power Supply


Problem: When trying to install XP Pro, I get the above BSOD every time it gets to the point where it says, "Starting Windows."

Tried updating the BIOS, which was successful, to the latest 8/17/06 version, but no change.
Tried disconnecting the SATA drive and installing an IDE, but no luck with that either.

When I tried an installation of Vista Ultimate, it went through with no problems, which makes me hopeful it's not defective hardware. I'm not ready to go with Vista, so I want to get it working with XP.


The Intel Express Installer CD didn't seem to have SATA drivers on it, though a RAID driver was included, which I tried using the F6 option during install, without any sucess.

Can't get the minidump mentioned, because it doesn't get past first base in the install, and it doesn't show up in the Vista installation.

Tried all different combinations I could think of, setting BIOS setting to IDE, connecting to SATA ports 2 and 3 instead of port 0 and 1, putting the memory stick in a different slot, but it always ends up the same, with the STOP error screen.. Some of the addresses showing up changed from when I recorded the screenshot, but the 0x...07E, 0xC0...05, and DateStamp are identical.

Does the pci.sys indicate a problem that XP might have with this hardware?
I looked through the Microsoft site for the STOP error code, but didn't find anything that seemed to apply.
Since it went through with no problem when Vista was installed, I figured the hardware should be okay. I also ran the mem86 test for a while and didn't see any errors come up.

As far as the temperature, I think it's actually indicating correctly; for some reason the processor heats up a lot more while sitting in the BIOS hardware monitoring screen as opposed to when the OS is running. I can easily feel the difference when touching the heatsink; it sits at a much higher temperature in the bios monitor. Maybe the idea was to provide a full load type of reading for evaluating the cpu cooler efficiency; dunno. If that was the intent, maybe it wasn't such a good idea, since it just makes for worried customers.. I notice when I run PC Wizard 2006 that it shows a speed of 2800 MHz, instead of 3200, hopefully that's supposed to be a power saving mode rather than thermal throttling of some sort.
When I called Intel about the high temp readings, they said it may be fixed in some future release, though they haven't confirmed it as a problem; they only received some reports from customers about it and are looking into it.
The suggestions they gave me for that was to update the BIOS, clear the CMOS, and go through a BIOS recovery routine, which didn't change anything. It seems like the support only covers problems with the processor; motherboard issues are supposed to be charged $25, according to the recorded message.

It's been a long while since I put together a PC; the assembly was fairly easy on this barebone I got, but with all the aggravation just trying to load the OS, I might have been better off with a complete system - I'd like to find out if anyone with the same setup has loaded XP Pro successfully; if so, maybe I've got some defective hardware that just happens to not affect Vista.
At this point the only option may be the forced switch to Vista, since it's the only thing that works right now-

Any suggestions would be great-

Getting more inclined to think it may be a hardware issue now; removed the SATA drive entirely, installed an IDE drive, and it resulted in the exactly the same error message. Now the question is whether it's the memory, motherboard, or processor-
Don't have another system to play swaptronics with, or that might have been an easy way to diagnose it. Pretty discouraging-

Resolved!

Well, here's the scoop on the problem; the cause of the error is due to the old baseline XP Pro being incompatible with the newer motherboard; the solution is to slipstream a current service pack (used SP2) into a new boot CD. Then it all went through as it should have from the start-

Here's the excellent reference for slipstreaming XP that I followed:
http://winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp