X25-m and Win XP Pro sp2 (32bit) issues

[idata]

At first everything went smooth. Started installing drivers and then i ran into a problem. After updating my motherboard drivers to the latest version (via nvidia website) the computer refused to boot. It hangs at the windows logo screen. At first i thought it was the driver causing issues since it worked fine when i just used the drivers that came with the motherboard on the CD. I tried to uninstall the drivers and install the old ones but it kept stalling.

Then i just gave up, formated the SSD again and started over. This time just sticking with the drivers on the CD. But then after installing the monitor/video card drivers it starts doing other strange things. The windows logo screen hung for about 10 seconds longer than normal, then this strange login screen pops up. Not the normal one, it has the old windows classic border. When i click OK, explorer doesnt load and it gives me an error "userinit.exe - bad image" "blah blah winspool.drv blah blah". I opened up task manager with ctrl-alt-del, and tried to open explorer through it and it gave me another, similar but different error. At this point i start thinking maybe its the SSD. I did a search on google for the error i got and all the pages that came back related to virus and malware issues. Well unless someone hacked nvidia's website theres no way i downloaded a virus. Its a fresh install of windows xp pro sp2, and the only thing i downloaded was the driver off nvidia's website, and the driver for my monitor off the viewsonic website. I did a search on google for xp install issues x25-m, and found some posts on forums talking about aligning the partition, and that vista and win7RC both do this automatically but not xp. Also saw one site talk about going into BIOS and changing the SATA mode to IDE compatable. I went to BIOS and saw no such option. The only SATA options are to enable or disable RAID. Im not using raid. I suppose i could download win7-RC, but id really like to figure out how to get this to work with winxp Pro. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. The one bright lining to this dark cloud is i disconnected my old hard drive, so i can just plug it back in and still have this computer work till i figure out a way to get this new SSD to work on it.

Hardware:

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (MS-7125)

AMD Athlon 64 2ghz 2x 1gb DDR (dual channel) Nvida Geforce 7600gs

My old hard drive is SATA.

I see no options that mention anything about AHCI in the BIOS. It boots fine into safe mode. Would disabling the page file do anything?

[idata]

I have similar problems with my X25-M and my Intel DX48BT2 motherboard, updated with the latest firmware and drivers.

I can modify my SATA setting to either Legacy (boots fine but no RAID or ACHI) or Native - IDE (this also boots, but either RAID or ACHI in my Native selection both fails during XP installation and also startup.

I set it to Legacy and completed the installation. I updated to Native - IDE and got all the BIOS updates and driver and firmware updates I could get installed.

But if I try to change the BIOS to allow for my RAID or ACHI, it always fails. I'm analyzing the minidump to see what I can find.

Oddly enough, I had similar problems when I installed an X25-M into my Lenovo T500. Had to do the installation and all the driver and FW updates with the SATA configured for Legacy mode.

Once I did all that, though, I was able to update the SATA configuration to ACHI with no problem - XP boots and runs great.

I'll update the thread with any new information I discover - I suspect our problems may be similar.

Out of curiousity, what MOBO / CPU combination are you running?

[idata]

Ummm.... i already listed my Mobo/CPU combo.

My old system doesnt even have ACHI, it only supports IDE mode. From what i've ready ACHI isnt really needed for end users on PC's and is more for server application.