XP Install Hangs

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jack Bruss
  • Start date Start date
J

Jack Bruss

We just put a new hard drive, and a new CD-RW in my sons computer, and are
trying to install XP. We have formatted and partitioned the drive, and when
we boot with XP, everything seems fine until we get to "installing devices".
At this point the XP time estimate drops from about 37 to 34 minutes, but
then the computer just hangs, and there is no further movement of the time,
and the hard drive stops being accessed. We have tried this about 6 or 7
times now, with 2 different XP disks, and with a couple of different
partition arrangements.

The new drive is a Seagate 80G, and if we go to dos, we can see it and 80 G
is what is indicated. This computer has been running fine before with XP.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks,

Jack
 
Why don't you install xp first, then install the new cd-rw. Could be
its looking for a driver it can't find.
 
Jack Bruss said:
We just put a new hard drive, and a new CD-RW in my sons computer, and are
trying to install XP. We have formatted and partitioned the drive, and when
we boot with XP, everything seems fine until we get to "installing devices".
At this point the XP time estimate drops from about 37 to 34 minutes, but
then the computer just hangs, and there is no further movement of the time,
and the hard drive stops being accessed. We have tried this about 6 or 7
times now, with 2 different XP disks, and with a couple of different
partition arrangements.

The new drive is a Seagate 80G, and if we go to dos, we can see it and 80 G
is what is indicated. This computer has been running fine before with XP.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks,

Jack
Click to expand...

Cant you ghost the old hard drive onto the new one ? Then once the computer
is working install the CD-RW drive.

The only method you can use is elimination, remove everything from the PC
that you can apart from the essentials i.e

Video, Cdrom

Any other cards such as sound, modem. try removing see if this helps

Let Me know how you get on

Mark
 
Jack said:
We just put a new hard drive, and a new CD-RW in my sons computer, and are
trying to install XP. We have formatted and partitioned the drive, and when
we boot with XP, everything seems fine until we get to "installing devices".
At this point the XP time estimate drops from about 37 to 34 minutes, but
then the computer just hangs, and there is no further movement of the time,
and the hard drive stops being accessed. We have tried this about 6 or 7
times now, with 2 different XP disks, and with a couple of different
partition arrangements.

The new drive is a Seagate 80G, and if we go to dos, we can see it and 80 G
is what is indicated. This computer has been running fine before with XP.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks,

Jack
Click to expand...

Try going into BIOS and selecting the "Failsafe" settings before the
installation. If your install succeeds, be sure to revert to optimum
settings later. The drivers XP is using during install are rather dumb
and may be contributing to the hang.

Roger
 
Jack said:
We just put a new hard drive, and a new CD-RW in my sons computer,
and are trying to install XP. We have formatted and partitioned the
drive, and when we boot with XP, everything seems fine until we get
to "installing devices". At this point the XP time estimate drops
from about 37 to 34 minutes, but then the computer just hangs, and
there is no further movement of the time, and the hard drive stops
being accessed. We have tried this about 6 or 7 times now, with 2
different XP disks, and with a couple of different partition
arrangements.

The new drive is a Seagate 80G, and if we go to dos, we can see it
and 80 G is what is indicated. This computer has been running fine
before with XP.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks,

Jack
Click to expand...

try it with minimal hardware (pull modems/soundcards/etc out) or if all
onboard try disabling USB/sound/LAN, etc in BIOS before installing.
once it's got XP on it, reenable and install drivers.

if this doesn't work the first thing i'd look at woul dbe dodgy RAM.

ric h
 
Well, my son got the problem solved today. At my suggestion he installed
Win98, which went on without a hitch. Then he tried to install XP over it,
and had the same problem. At that point, when it was hung, he pressed the
reset button as we had done yesterday several times, but this time the bios
was set to boot on the hard drive, where yesterday, we were setting it for
the CD drive or the floppy drive.

Anyway, when it tried to boot on the hard drive, XP asked if he wanted to
continue the installation, so he said yes, and then it started about where
it had left off, with 39 minutes remaining, but this time it went through
and finished the installation! All I can say is - weird. I appreciate the
suggestions of everyone, even though we hadn't had much of a chance to try
them.

Thanks.
Jack
 
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