HP Pavillion xp reinstall hell

  • Thread starter Thread starter Greg Palmer
  • Start date Start date
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Greg Palmer

I am tearing out what little of my hair I have left trying to reinstall

Windows XP on my computer here. It's pretty much a standard (512mb ram,

160gb c drive, dvdrw, cdrom, etc, etc) out of the box HP Pavillion
a430n, with the exception of a second had drive added.

A couple months back, I managed to totally hose Windows after
installing Linux. When I went back to reinstall Windows (from a retail
cd) I boot from cd, and it gets just past the "checking your computer's

hardware" part, then goes to a blue screen saying an stop error was
encountered, and points to usbport.sys. Sometimes it'll get a little
further, but then give me the same error. This happens on both the
original retail cd I have, and the one I've slipstreamed SP2 into.
Eventually (probably 30-40 tries later) I was able to get it to go
through the entire installation process without crashing.


I've gotten to the point again now where I need to do another clean
windows install on here. I tried the retail cds again with no luck.
(Same problem as before). I finally found my HP restore cds. Popped
those in and restored the hard drive to factory condition, then did a
restore of Windows from that. It seemed to work -- copied all the
windows files over. Then it reboots and goes to the part where it
configures the windows installation -- and promptly fails.


It seems like Windows is not liking something on this PC. Any
suggestions out there? Someone at a local computer shop suggested it
could be a bad RAM chip. He'd be happy to diagnose it for $100, but I'd

like to see if I can't get some suggestions before I shell that out or
replace said RAM.
 
In order to use the HP recovery CD, you must return your
HP computer to the exact hardware configuration it shipped with.
In your case, you'll have to physically disconnect the second hard drive.

Performing a Destructive Recovery:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...=us&lc=en&dlc=en&docname=bph07145#bph07145_cp

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP 2007
Windows - Shell/User

Enjoy all the benefits of genuine Microsoft software:
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/default.mspx

---------------------------------------------------------------------------­---------------------------------

:

| I am tearing out what little of my hair I have left trying to reinstall
|
| Windows XP on my computer here. It's pretty much a standard (512mb ram,
|
| 160gb c drive, dvdrw, cdrom, etc, etc) out of the box HP Pavillion
| a430n, with the exception of a second had drive added.
|
| A couple months back, I managed to totally hose Windows after
| installing Linux. When I went back to reinstall Windows (from a retail
| cd) I boot from cd, and it gets just past the "checking your computer's
|
| hardware" part, then goes to a blue screen saying an stop error was
| encountered, and points to usbport.sys. Sometimes it'll get a little
| further, but then give me the same error. This happens on both the
| original retail cd I have, and the one I've slipstreamed SP2 into.
| Eventually (probably 30-40 tries later) I was able to get it to go
| through the entire installation process without crashing.
|
|
| I've gotten to the point again now where I need to do another clean
| windows install on here. I tried the retail cds again with no luck.
| (Same problem as before). I finally found my HP restore cds. Popped
| those in and restored the hard drive to factory condition, then did a
| restore of Windows from that. It seemed to work -- copied all the
| windows files over. Then it reboots and goes to the part where it
| configures the windows installation -- and promptly fails.
|
|
| It seems like Windows is not liking something on this PC. Any
| suggestions out there? Someone at a local computer shop suggested it
| could be a bad RAM chip. He'd be happy to diagnose it for $100, but I'd
|
| like to see if I can't get some suggestions before I shell that out or
| replace said RAM.
 
Thanks, will try doing the recovery with the sendond hd unplugged.
Still does not explain, however, why a retail copy of XP would blow up
every time I try to install.
 
I agree with Carey the HP recovery process won't work with a second hard
drive installed. It sounds like you have other problems though. I would
suspect a hardware problem. Most likely - bad ram, bad cd/dvd drive, bad
hard drive, bad motherboard, bad power supply. I'd start by testing the ram.
If that checks out then test the rest of the list in that order.
 
I went ahead and ran the memory test utility on my Ubuntu cd. That
checked out ok, so I started running down the other items. It occurred
to me that the main hard drive is running off a cable-select cable.
(Jumpered to use cselect, and it's on the "master" connector on the
cable.) The drive I was using as a secondary is older and does not
support cselect, and was directly jumpered as a slave. I disconnected
it and tried running the install off the commercial XP cd, and what do
you know? No crashes or blue screens.

Knock on wood, it seems stable. If it continues to work solidly, I
guess I'll reckon the 2nd hdd was causing the troubles.
 
Me too! Now I just have to find another hard drive to put in here. (I
always like having a second physical unit to keep data on.) Perhaps an
external one this time. Hmmm...
 
If the old drive doesn't have a cable select jumper then you can leave it
set as a slave and either set the other drive as a master or set it as a
slave to your CD/DVD drive and set the CD/DVD to master.
 
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