Problems installing Win XP Home Edition

[gildrone]

K7S5A MOBO
Athlon XP 1600 CPU
256MB Ram
20GB Hard Drive - Primary Master
CD-Writer - Secondary Master
DVD ROM - Secondary Slave
Floppy Drive
AGP Graphics Card
PCI Modem
On Board front access USB sockets connected
Case Speaker connected
CD-Writer audio cable connected to MOBO

All the above is new kit I am using as a custom build.

When I power on and hit F8 to enter the boot menu, and select the CD-Writer as the Boot drive (with the Win XP disc loaded) I start to load Win XP

Setup is inspecting your config
then, Windows setup is loading files
then, Windows setup is starting windows
then, Windows XP Home Edition Setup
Welcome to setup
1. Hit enter to setup
2. Hit R to repair a previous install
3. Hit F3 to quit

If I hit either 1 or 2, I then get ..... Please wait ...

and thats it, nothing else happens, except the floppy light comes on.

I have tried swapping the cd and DVD .. no diff
I have tried booting from a boot disk in the floppy, it boots to the the A prompt, I change to the D prompt and type setup and get ... cannot boot from DOS
I have tried re formatting the hard drive ..... cannot format a network drive?????? (don't ask, I don't know)

Its driving me batty ... can anyone advise?

Duncan

[qajfat]

If you want to try installing WinXP from DOS, boot with a Win98 floppy with CD support, change to your CD drive D: and then cd to I386. Once there type winnt.exe and go from there. It won't guarantee success but you've got a better chance than an ungrade. Good luck.

[gildrone]

Thank you for your input ... I have tried that and still no diff ... helppppppppp ... I really am stuck ...


Duncan

[BipolarBill]

For future reference, get your XP boot disks here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q310994

The stage you're at when setup freezes is the disk-health checking phase. Is the drive new? Is it known to be healthy? Is it being detected by the BIOS? Has it had another OS on it?

I would go to IBM and download Zap:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Get the readme too. Clear the drive and try again. Home setup will let you create and format partitions.

[paramufay]

I hope you are not trying to load that flakey pirated XP version floating around on the net:eek:

just kidding dude

to correct problem now (network drive) you will need to zero fill the HD and fdisk. this returns the HD to factory fresh condiction and destroys ALL data

a format and /or a fdisk will not destroy the MSB (master boot record) which has corrupted information that is stoping the OS from loading.

depending on which way your bios is set you may need a floppy to boot from.

personally I like to set it as

floppy 1st
HD 2nd
cdrom 3rd

[gildrone]

Thank you for your replies.


The Hard drive is new and being recognised.
The CD-Writer is new and being recognised.
The DVD drive is new and being recognised.
The Floppy drive is new and being recognised.

I have downloaded ZAP ... what a super little utility .... and run it to clear the hard drive.

This is the result of the boot with the Win XP in the CD-Writer drive.

System boots up OK.
then
Searching for Boot Record from IDE 0 .... not found.
Searching for Boot Record from Floppy .... not found.
Searching for Boot Record from CDROM .... OK.

and Windows starts to load .....
it copies files to the hard drive and then
it gets to the blue screen asking wether to install Windows or Repair Windows or Quit.
When I hit enter to install Windows it says 'Please wait' ..... and thats it ... nothing else happens.

It's driving me batty. Can the collective brains of sysopt help? I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem.

Duncan
(Thats me in the corner, tearing my hair out)

[SPEEDO]

How long did you wait before giving up?

I had an Abit Kt7A-Raid board that did this and I had to move the hard drive to another machine just to do the install. :(

If you do this just load the OS then move the drive back to your new machine..;)

SPEEDO

[gildrone]

Hello all and thanks for all the replies ...

I have now solved the prob, and have egg all over my face, but maybe this will be useful to others.

When I first booted up and got the CMOS error message 'Incorrect CPU Speed', I went into BIOS and reset the speed from 100/100 to 100/133 when I should have set it to 133/133.

Sorry if I have caused sleepless nights for my sysopt buddies whilst they agonised and sweated over my problem ... hehehehe

Thanks again
Duncan

[qajfat]

BipolarBill first of all let me congratulate you on your new appointment. You deserved it because you are always a great help to everyone. Well done!
Now what I wanted to ask is this. Since I see no mention of an IBM drive can I assume that you can use Zap for any make drive. Thanks for your help.

Lawrence

[x51out]

I've used ZAP with success on a Maxtor HDD (thanx to BipolarBill's advice a while back... and also: Congrat's BipolarBill!)

[BipolarBill]

Thanks to you all. :t

I'm running out of fresh ideas. Maybe it's a good time for a promotion! :rolleyes: