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Wow, woof!
Either I need to perform an exorcism on this PC I'm working on or something else is up.
So I have in my possession an HP Pavilion a1230n desktop compulator. I was told that it crashed some time ago and was only used for simple things as it was deemed not trust worthy and stable. It was running Windows xp until about two weeks ago when the power at the person's house went out suddenly and the ntldr was corrupted and wouldn't boot, obviously the solution to that was to do a clean install but as xp is to be dead soon, the decision was made to go to the Windows 8.1.
Well, that's easier said than done.
It seems as if this is genuinely possessed by an evil spirit, as I was told by the owner, because LITERALLY NOTHING I've done is allowing me to install Windows 8.1, not even booting into the USB installer of 8.1, or even trying to run Windows 8.1. Normally I deploy Windows through DISM and my custom .wim file onto the hard drive and I boot into WinPE or a neutered Windows installer USB and apply boot files to the drive and it works just fine. That hasn't worked. I had 8.1 on the target drive, was actually able to get the DVD installer to run, although this was the second time since the first run of it didn't even find a hard drive when I plugged it back in, and apply boot files successfully. I restarted, but it ran for about a few seconds and ran into continuous reboots before it said that the install needs to be repaired.
Then I tried to actually run the DVD installer of straight up vanilla Windows 8 to see if maybe there was a CPU requirement not being met, but the installation failed about 47% through. I THINK the error code was 0xc0000221, not sure though. Next I tried remaking a THIRD USB installation of 8.1, but EVERY single time when I boot off into the USB drive, it takes at least five minutes (normally it shouldn't take so long) before any activity on screen shows. But EVERY time, it hangs up and restarts. The error code I got for sure with that was elxstor.sys 0xc0000221. In one of the failed attempts of installing, it was the same thing but with a different .sys file.
The thing is I KNOW for sure my .iso images of Windows are perfectly fine I was just recently used the previous USB installer to deploy 8.1 onto a laptop just yesterday but doesn't work on this PC. The compulator in question is 64 bit capable and as far as I know meets the Windows 8 CPU requirements. I've disconnected EVERY peripheral even the keyboard, and obviously reconnected the keyboard and ran it again. I've cleared the CMOS. I have the USB and keyboard connected to the motherboard's USB ports and not the headers. I've also gone to the extent of using a third party, non-partisan hard drive with Windows 8.1 deployed on it to try and install boot files on that to see if hard drive issues may be present from the PC's drive. That also didn't work nor did installing Windows onto that separate drive from the DVD work either. I've checked the PC's hard drive for errors, everything is ok.
I've installed Windows at least over 100 different times from VMs to many different PCs, but this is literally the first one to cause such an issue I can't even think of why. Although, thinking about it, I do remember once with a slightly older HP desktop when I was trying to run a Windows 7 To Go drive off of it, it just wouldn't run whatsoever and I had to fix the bcdboot files for it run again.
So does anyone have any suggestions of what I should do or do I need a priest? Many thanks!
Either I need to perform an exorcism on this PC I'm working on or something else is up.
So I have in my possession an HP Pavilion a1230n desktop compulator. I was told that it crashed some time ago and was only used for simple things as it was deemed not trust worthy and stable. It was running Windows xp until about two weeks ago when the power at the person's house went out suddenly and the ntldr was corrupted and wouldn't boot, obviously the solution to that was to do a clean install but as xp is to be dead soon, the decision was made to go to the Windows 8.1.
Well, that's easier said than done.
It seems as if this is genuinely possessed by an evil spirit, as I was told by the owner, because LITERALLY NOTHING I've done is allowing me to install Windows 8.1, not even booting into the USB installer of 8.1, or even trying to run Windows 8.1. Normally I deploy Windows through DISM and my custom .wim file onto the hard drive and I boot into WinPE or a neutered Windows installer USB and apply boot files to the drive and it works just fine. That hasn't worked. I had 8.1 on the target drive, was actually able to get the DVD installer to run, although this was the second time since the first run of it didn't even find a hard drive when I plugged it back in, and apply boot files successfully. I restarted, but it ran for about a few seconds and ran into continuous reboots before it said that the install needs to be repaired.
Then I tried to actually run the DVD installer of straight up vanilla Windows 8 to see if maybe there was a CPU requirement not being met, but the installation failed about 47% through. I THINK the error code was 0xc0000221, not sure though. Next I tried remaking a THIRD USB installation of 8.1, but EVERY single time when I boot off into the USB drive, it takes at least five minutes (normally it shouldn't take so long) before any activity on screen shows. But EVERY time, it hangs up and restarts. The error code I got for sure with that was elxstor.sys 0xc0000221. In one of the failed attempts of installing, it was the same thing but with a different .sys file.
The thing is I KNOW for sure my .iso images of Windows are perfectly fine I was just recently used the previous USB installer to deploy 8.1 onto a laptop just yesterday but doesn't work on this PC. The compulator in question is 64 bit capable and as far as I know meets the Windows 8 CPU requirements. I've disconnected EVERY peripheral even the keyboard, and obviously reconnected the keyboard and ran it again. I've cleared the CMOS. I have the USB and keyboard connected to the motherboard's USB ports and not the headers. I've also gone to the extent of using a third party, non-partisan hard drive with Windows 8.1 deployed on it to try and install boot files on that to see if hard drive issues may be present from the PC's drive. That also didn't work nor did installing Windows onto that separate drive from the DVD work either. I've checked the PC's hard drive for errors, everything is ok.
I've installed Windows at least over 100 different times from VMs to many different PCs, but this is literally the first one to cause such an issue I can't even think of why. Although, thinking about it, I do remember once with a slightly older HP desktop when I was trying to run a Windows 7 To Go drive off of it, it just wouldn't run whatsoever and I had to fix the bcdboot files for it run again.
So does anyone have any suggestions of what I should do or do I need a priest? Many thanks!
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1 Pro
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- ASUS
- CPU
- AMD FX 8320
- Motherboard
- Crosshair V Formula-Z
- Memory
- 16 gig DDR3
- Graphics Card(s)
- ASUS R9 270
- Screen Resolution
- 1440x900
- Hard Drives
- 1 TB Seagate Barracuda (starting to hate Seagate)
x2 3 TB Toshibas
Windows 8.1 is installed on a SanDisk Ultra Plus 256 GB
- PSU
- OCZ 500 watt
- Case
- A current work in progres as I'll be building the physical case myself. It shall be fantastic.
- Cooling
- Arctic Cooler with 3 heatpipes
- Keyboard
- Logitech K750 wireless solar powered keyboard
- Mouse
- Microsoft Touch Mouse
- Browser
- Internet Explorer 11
- Antivirus
- Windows Defender, but I might go back on KIS 2014