I am a desktop support tech for a large school district which purchased at least 1000 of these units. Starting off, I changed the bios setting for the hard disk to "ide" and installed XP pro and all other programs without issue.
I did not install the sata ahci drivers or switch the bios setting back. I figured that they might as well stay on ide permanently. I also verified that the ram (2x1gb sticks) were in the correct slots (1 and 3) and all cables were firmly attached.
I was able to sysprep, create and deploy the images without issue. But for some reason, these pc's will boot loop when powered on. Out of a lab of 25 pcs, 1-2 will boot loop within 1 day after imaging. If you leave the pcs on, it seems that they have no issues. If you power down at night and boot in the morning, several will boot loop.
I tried using the "disable automatic restart " in the xp boot menu but immediately after displaying the "xp"loading bar screen, the system will restart.
I am able to enter the pc using safe mode or safe mode with networking. Once in safe mode, nothing I do seems to rectify the situation. I have installed the sata ahci drivers and switched the bios setting back to ahci. The system still boot loops and I must use safe mode. I also updated the bios and chipset drivers but that does nothing. Sometimes the affected pc will correct itself after a few days but it usually does not. I have found that rerunning the xp setup using the repair option will "bring it back" but it may boot loop in the future.
These are basically brand new machines and they always pass hard drive and memory diagnostics without issue.
There are many minidump files (c:windows\minidumps) but I'm not sure what the actual issue is. They point to several driver files: ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlpa.exe, and hal.dll. Thanks for all your help!
I did not install the sata ahci drivers or switch the bios setting back. I figured that they might as well stay on ide permanently. I also verified that the ram (2x1gb sticks) were in the correct slots (1 and 3) and all cables were firmly attached.
I was able to sysprep, create and deploy the images without issue. But for some reason, these pc's will boot loop when powered on. Out of a lab of 25 pcs, 1-2 will boot loop within 1 day after imaging. If you leave the pcs on, it seems that they have no issues. If you power down at night and boot in the morning, several will boot loop.
I tried using the "disable automatic restart " in the xp boot menu but immediately after displaying the "xp"loading bar screen, the system will restart.
I am able to enter the pc using safe mode or safe mode with networking. Once in safe mode, nothing I do seems to rectify the situation. I have installed the sata ahci drivers and switched the bios setting back to ahci. The system still boot loops and I must use safe mode. I also updated the bios and chipset drivers but that does nothing. Sometimes the affected pc will correct itself after a few days but it usually does not. I have found that rerunning the xp setup using the repair option will "bring it back" but it may boot loop in the future.
These are basically brand new machines and they always pass hard drive and memory diagnostics without issue.
There are many minidump files (c:windows\minidumps) but I'm not sure what the actual issue is. They point to several driver files: ntoskrnl.exe, ntkrnlpa.exe, and hal.dll. Thanks for all your help!
