After 10 hours of troubleshooting, I am almost ready to quit! This bastion of tech guru support is my last hope before I throw Win-anything, into the trash bin.

I get Stop Errors (particularly this one: "IRQL_NOT LESS OR EQUAL") as well as a host of others, radomly interspersed after each reboot, each reformat, each attempt to get beyond the last stretch of OS-anything installed.

Here's the plan:

Dual boot WinMe/Win2k or AdvSvr
Fresh Install of each OS on new system

WinME on C:\ 15 Gigs (works great, the OS partition I'm writing this to you now on)

Planned (but failing=stop errors)
Win2kPro(also tried Win2k Advanced Server)
on D:\ 35 Gigs.

System specs:

AMD 1.2 GHz Thunderbird CPU
Soyo K7VTA-B Socket A MotherBd
Full Tower/Server case w/5 cooling fans
768 MB (256x3) Sticks of Micron PC133
40 GIG UATA 66/100 (7200 RPM) Quantum HD
Lynksys 10/100 NIC
Voodoo 5500 64 MB Vidie
SoundBlaster PCI 128
Lava PCI Xtra ComPort add-on card
Lava ISA Xtra LPTPort add-on card
Creative Labs 52 X CDROM Drive
Samsung 8/8/32 CD Burner Drive
Iomega Zip 100 Drive
3.5 Floppy

Had Win2k previously installed (ran perfectly for 5 months, until MFT error corrupted drive, preventing MMC to load, as well as defrag/scandisk. Microsoft Technet said to backup data, FDISK, reinstall since no known solution or workaround. Winternals dianosis software could not help, nor OO-software.com, nor DiskMinder. So, forced to reinstall.

Since I have so many games that don't run in Win2k, figured I'd put WinME/Win2k into dual boot and get best of both worlds. This was not to be. Nothing in hardware/software has been changed except the AMD 1.2 GHz, up from AMD Thunderbird 900 MHz. Now, as I stay up for my 11th straight hour, I am being win-shafted for no apparent reason.

Is this possibly a WinME thing? Should I scrap the dual-boot idea alltogether, or will I still end up with this stop-error nonsense? Do you think that writing zeros to the HD would have been better?

When I had Win2k Pro previous to this install configuration, it was NTFS on a SCSI controller (w/ 10 gig 5400 RPM HD for off-disk page file). Controller card is now gone, removed extra HD, and reformatted primary 40 GIG in Fat32 (for WinME's sake). Didn't really use the security features of NTFS anyway. Am I paying the cost of not writing zeros? I don't know why this Stop Error thing comes up, every time, in each OS (expect WinME) just after I enter the CD-Key and it reboots, then I do Locale, Time & Keyboard settings, that's when it BSOD's with the all-critical, all-consuming, all-powerfull Stop Error, forcing me to hit the power switch on my UPS (Ctrl, Alt, Delete has no effect).

Help!! I'm in dual-boot hell! Nothing seems to work. You guyz are my last hope. BTW, have similar system running Linux Apache, have not had a single incident loading that. But I don't need two Linux's!

I'm really not sure what's going on anymore since nothing except the CPU/SCSI/IDE controller was changed since I originally installed Win2k. Now it dosen't like anything I do and it's not even fully installed yet!

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can spare. And forgive my spelling, it's been a looooooong night and I have to be at work in 2 hours. Arrrgh!!!

The best,

RunningHoove

Boot up with a Windows disk and try running FDISK /MBR.
If that doesn't work, try formatting the partiton you want to place 2000 Server onto BEFORE you try installing (you can reformat it during the install, but this makes sure it's ok), then run a scandisk utility on the drive partition to make sure there are no surface errors.....

Your Stop Errors (particularly this one: "IRQL_NOT LESS OR EQUAL") is almost always caused by cards using the same address space.

You can solve it by removing ALL non-essential cards at OS install and then when it's up and running reinstall cards ONE AT A TIME ONLY. Bringing the system up and shutting down between each cards install. Its a pain but will always work. Sound cards and video editing stuff seem to generate more probelms. Also verify in the bios that you are not cacheing the video etc....

I do not know what chipset that motherboard is running but I have extensive experiance with the kt133a and the southbridge 686b, with their associated win2k nightmares at this time. Make very sure you have flashed to the newest bios and have their latest drivers, along with sp2 for win2k.

You will have fun making the soundblaster work right. (grin)

email if I can help. I have installed over 100 win2k installs in the last 5 weeks now.
(long sigh)

Tex