When I try to install Windows 2000 or NT 4 Server on this PC, the text part of the install goes fine, but after the first reboot, I usually get the message “ntoskrnl.exe could not be found”. When I boot to the recovery console on the Win 2K CD, I find that the boot.ini is missing. Replacing boot.ini allows setup to continue. However, this isn’t a real fix, because I’ve had to repeat the install three times (!); sooner or later some other strange thing happens to this flaky system (like boot.ini disappearing again, or I get a totally blank desktop when I logon). I also tried, on the second attempt to get a clean install, just starting the setup over again and it actually worked once without a hitch (but still blew up later). I’ve already replaced the system disk with one that is known to work- of course both disks passed analysis in the SCSI BIOS anyway. I’ve also run three full passes of Memtest86 on my system to test the RAM. I’ve also confirmed that my SCSI bus is properly terminated on both ends, the cable is less than a meter long (20 MHz), and the system disk has write cache disabled in the BIOS.
System details:
AMD K6-2 400
Iwill P55TV motherboard (i430VX)
64 MB PC66 CL2 SDRAM
Integrated Adaptec AIC-7860 Ultra SCSI2 GB Seagate ST12400N system disk (formatted NTFS during install)
9 GB IBM DNES309170 data disk (NTFS)
NEC 465 SCSI CD-ROM
Seagate CTL96G-S DDS2 autoloader
Diamond Stealth SE video
3com 3c905B 10/100 NIC
3com 3c900B 10 NIC
Antec 250W PS