W3J Constantly Restarting after Win 7/Reformat

I tried to install the Windows 7 RC and my W3J got stuck in an endless cycle of reboots. So I then tried to reformat multiple times using my provided Windows XP disks but my laptop is freezing after finishing the drivers installation (just after it says to restart the computer and take out the driver disk once pre-installation environment has been setup) or starts rebooting incecessantly at the same stage. I am running bios version 210 (the latest for the W3J in XP). I've taken out both sticks of RAM and unplugged/plugged back in my HD.

I also tried to install Bios v211 for which fixes the reboot problem in Vista using GenTech's helpful video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM7KHp5Yw0U), but to no avail, the bios wouldn't update and reboots commenced.

Any ideas -- aside from throwing my W3J off my 2nd floor balcony?

Thanks for any help.

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*Using DBAN to completely my hard drive and reinstalling XP after that worked, see below for more*

 

Updated with most recently attempted solutions.

 

from what i read, it reboots before post'ing, meaning you can't get into the bios at all any more?

 

I can get into the bios by hitting F2 as it starts up, but Windows will not load. Basically, bios is the only thing I have access to.

Update:

Now using DBAN to completely erase HD and hopefully every semblance of Win 7, will then try to reformat/reinstall XP. *Fingers crossed*

 

OK I am going to update this thread one last time just in case anyone comes sniffing around with a similar problem.

Using DBAN to completely erase the HDD worked. I am now on my way to getting XP up and running again on my W3J. DBAN is a nice little program and comes highly recommended by me, only downside is that it took 22 hours to erase my 100gb hd (and that was on "quick" format).

Thanks.

 

Heh yeah, probably a "FDISK /MBR" and/or erasing all partitions and rebuilding them would have done the same thing, in a much shorter time. See my Tips and Tricks.

But anyway, glad it's fixed.

 

I was thining the same thing because I just went through a similar problem with Vista and W7 RC1 on my desktop. I tried updating reinstalling windows (both versions) and then updating my BIOS, but to no avail. Even regular FDISK /MBR wasn't working...I had to delete my MBR completely before I rebuilding the MBR and getting it to work.

I'm glad you found something else that worked too.

 

I see that you have Win 7 installed. In case I feel like playing with fire ever again, did you update to Bios v211 before installing? Did you go from Vista to Win 7 or from XP? I am trying to figure out what I did wrong or what went wrong because plenty others such as yourself have managed to get it installed fine.

I had all the W3J Vista drivers saved on my thumb drive and I was going to install them once I got Win 7 up and running, was that the wrong approach?

 

I went from XP to W7 Beta then to W7 RC1.

When I went up from XP to the Beta, I had to update everything to Vista drivers (including the BIOS to 211). I did not install the Asus Splendid stuff because I my wife and kids kept hitting the side buttons and I never really used them (other than the button to toggle the wireless card on and off), so I just never installed it when I upgraded.

When I had my problem on my desktop, it had something to do with my partition messing up my MBR. From what I could tell, it kept trying to look for the boot files on the wrong partition and reinstalling windows would not change the MBR to look in the right place.

 

Thanks for the tips. If I decide to give it another go I'll update the drivers beforehand . I just wasn't sure because they were drivers *for Vista* and I was running XP so I was worried about compatibility.

 

Just make sure you update the BIOS to 211 (if you haven't rolled it back) before you install W7. Then install W7. I then let W7 auto updater install all the updates that it wanted. Once it was done doing that, I noticed that it had installed most of my drivers for me (to the latest ones). I don't remember which ones it did update, so you will have to check them and compare them to the newest ones from Asus's website.