Failed reinstalls of XP Home

by philcreeklab Jun 3, 2005 11:27AM PDT

System
750 MHz AMD, 256 M Ram, 2 IDE CD-RW drives 48x... on channel 1, 1 20 GB hard drive on channel 0, cut into partitions C,D,E (D&E FAT, C initially NTFS), floppy
IWill Motherboard - BIOS flashed to most current.

System began to degrade - so I took it as time to unload some software and get back to stability .. and then move forward; however

could not get install to complete.
System boots from Windows XP Home upgrade CD, goes thru initial setup OK, then on the restart after which the OS is actually loaded there is a whole series of files which will not load
Bought new Windows XP Home with SP2 upgrade.
Still goes thru initial set up fine (boots, starts windows, asks about installing new or fixing old, partitioning disk or using), then the system restarts and always hangs up loading some of the files. Always same files not loaded with a given XP CD, although some of the files are the same from using one CD or the other.
Have reformatted the C: partition many times to no avail. Changed C: from NTFS to FAT32 - no help there.
At one time error messages led me to believe there was a "dirty flag" in the NTFS partition. Could this possibly have resulted in the observed behavior?

It almost seems like it is a hardware limitation of some sort.

System seemed to run XP ok for several months. System used to run ME just fine.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -

partitions

by Merl Priester Jun 3, 2005 2:24PM PDT

You have that 20 gig cut into many pieces.
Why are you doing that? Windows really should not be on a partiton smaller than 10 gigs (my opinion)
An install of XP Clean will take up almost 2 gigs, then all the software.

How did the partition get partitoned. When installing XP, you should delete partiton C: and let XP create the partiton and format it both. FAT32 aand NTFS will both work but most here will agree on NTFS.

Other possible problems I have encountered with failed installs is a bad CDROM drive. It may read disks after XP is installed, but many are not good enough to install XP.

Other problems can be from bad memory to unstable mainboard and overheating. Pull the cover off while installing.

Unplug all hardware except one hard drive one CDRom and your video card, take everthing else out.

- Collapse -

I might do a drive fitness test....

by Michael Geist Jun 3, 2005 11:19PM PDT

courtesy of the hard drive makers software. Twenty gig drives are at least a few years old by now and prone to failure.

- Collapse -

Drive not used extensively

by philcreeklab Jun 4, 2005 2:54AM PDT

Due to some other issues, the 20 GB drive has only been in an installed and working system about two years. The system was not that heavily used either so I think the disk drive is not the problem. I had previously done checks with Systemworks Pro Disk Doctor and all was apparently OK.

Thanks for the suggestion.

- Collapse -

(NT) (NT) Drives can go bad in ONE day of use

by Merl Priester Jun 4, 2005 3:28AM PDT

- Collapse -

Low level HDD test

by fmd190 Jun 4, 2005 1:43PM PDT

If you feel this is a HDD problem you may try to check what you HDD itself reports about its state using S.M.A.R.T technology. A good utility for this is Hard Drive Inspector http://www.altrixsoft.com/download/hdinsp.exe You don't have to buy it to perform this check but I think it worth its $30 since it allows you to control your HDD state in real time.

- Collapse -

xp hanging installation

by MJLance Jun 4, 2005 3:57PM PDT

have you tried reseating the memory modules of your computer?
an old school technique that we had found it very very useful and helpful as well is that, we actually try to rub the memory modules with white rubber eraser and then reseat them and then installation goes smoothly. although it may sound to pathetic and risky, maybe trying to debug the hardriver would somehow fix it, just incase you may use it, here is the debug script,

debug (enter)

-F 200 L1000 0 (enter)

-A CS:100 (enter)

xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 (enter)

xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 (enter)

xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 (enter)

xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (enter)

xxxx:010C INT 13 (enter)

xxxx:010E INT 20 (enter)

xxxx:0110 (Leave this line blank and press the <Enter> key)

-G (enter)

"program terminated normally"

you have to manually turn of your computer, start installing the windows on the usual way.

PS
you will need an msdos startup disk
under the win 98/win ME OS and include
debug file on the startup as well.

hope this will work

Failed reinstalls of XP Home

CNET Forums

Other Forums

Forum Info