XP Installation Problem!!

[deversol]

I finally tried to install XP Pro yesterday, and had a ton of problems...

I have an Asus A7v133 mobo with a 1.3GHz Athlon, 768 MB PC133 RAM, Leadtek GeForce4 Ti4400, and am installing XP Professional on a WD SE 80gb hard drive formatted in NTFS. I also have two other hard drives, one of which I have Windows 2000 installed, but plan on replacing that drive when I get XP working correctly....

I booted with the XP cd and setup started. After it copied the temporary files from the CD, I got a message saying "Starting up Windows" and it just hangs there...I had moved the hard drive from master to slave, and from the primary to secondary IDE port and get the same result...

I then put the hard drive in my roommate's computer and was able to get XP completely installed on that hard drive. I then put that hard drive in my PC, as the master drive, and set up BIOS so that it will boot from there first....I then get an error during boot-up saying something like "Disk read error, press ctrl+alt+delete to reboot"

I did a complete NTFS format again, and reinstalled XP on my roommate's computer. When I put the hard drive back in my PC, I get a blue screen when it tries to boot up...not sure what the error is offhand, will have to check once I get home...

I put in my hard drive with Win2k installed and booted from there...I also had the WD drive that has XP on it installed, and was able to view all of the files in the XP Windows directory, but am just unable to boot from it. I looked at my boot.ini file and it looked fine...

Do you guys have any idea whats going on here? Or do you have a clue how I can get XP installed? Why can I install it easily on my roommate's computer but not on mine? Thanks for any help!

 

[deversol]

I was able to install Windows 2000 Pro last night on that same hard drive in my PC with no problems. I also installed the latest BIOS version (ver. 1.009) from Asus' website. Then, while in Windows 2000, I inserted the Windows XP cd and started installing it. After the files were copied from the CD, XP rebooted my system. During reboot, the black Windows XP screen came up saying it was loading, and it just froze. I tried to reboot several times and it did the same thing each time. Then, I booted from the Windows XP cd and started to install it again. Once the files were copied from the CD, a message at the bottom of the screen said something like "Starting Microsoft Windows" and it just hangs there....I did try different BIOS settings as well as remove all of the other hard drives and CD drives besides the WD drive and a CD drive...to no avail.

Anyone have any ideas as to how I can get XP installed?

 

[jlanka]

Once the files were copied from the CD, a message at the bottom of the screen said something like "Starting Microsoft Windows" and it just hangs there

how long did you wait? that can take quite a while...

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[deversol]

Long enough for me to go outside and smoke a cigarette

 

[jlanka]

oh, OK, That should be long enough.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[korins]

Bump
Hello all, curiously I have the same problem right now. One day Windows would freeze everytime when starting up. When I try and do a fresh install (after fdisk and reformat), windows setup will say "Setup is starting Windows..." and will progress no further. I've tested my memory using memtest86 with no errors. Does anyone know what would cause this/how it can be remedied? Thanks very much in advance.
Specs:
Asus a78nx
corsair pc3200 (2X256)
Maxtor 60GB

 

[korins]

Oh, I also have an amd 2400xp installed on my system and a radeon 9500 pro. This situation is really confusing me. How can XP work great for months, and then fail to the point that it can't even be reintalled?

 

[alltaken]

5 re-installs worked for me when that happened

i had such a bad crash that it wouldn't even boot into safe mode????

5th time lucky, it worked a charm, and i was booting into windows in about 10 seconds.

but before that (even on a clean install) it was taking minutes.


XP is really strange



Alltaken