WinXP Install Problem

[timsmith545]

I have an HP Pivilion Slimline s7421c PC that was recently given to me. I had to replace the hard drive because it failed the SMART test. I have a brand new DVD. Both are SATA. When I attempt to install WinXP, after I hit a key to install from CD, my screen goes blank and it does not load from the DVD drive. I have tested the DVD drive, hard drive and WinXP boot installation on another system and all are fine. I've checked BIOS and believe I have all the proper selections. Everything is detected properly in BIOS (hard drive, DVD, Memeory). But for some reason it simply freezes when it should be loading WinXP, as if it can't locate it.

 

[Ubrales]

Format the hard drive NTFS and then try again. Do the formatting on a different computer if necessary.

 

[timsmith545]

I will try that and report back. Thanks for the suggestion. It was a backup drive for a Win7 computer, therefore I believe it is already NTFS but I will try a fresh format.

 

[timsmith545]

Problem Solved! Thanks to everyone. Let me report what my problem was in hopes it might help others.

I connected the hard drive to another system and reformatted to NTFS from Win7. I did an extended test using Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and it passed. Since someone had mentioned that my problem may have been caused from a bad MBR and since it was already connected to another system, I used TestDisk to write zeros to the MBR. I don't know if this was necessary, but that's what I did.

As a note, and something that may have caused the problem, but I admit if it did, I don't understand why, the drive had a C:\Windows directory. I thought I'd grabbed a drive that had already been reformatted but I was wrong (I had mislabeled it with a sticky note). I now believe it was a drive I had used for an early beta version of Win7 and then removed from my system.

Thanks again.