If the system restore route doesn't work, I'll phone Dell, to get a replacement disc. Would anyone know if a replacement disc would cost money; if so.
Thanks again, guys! You guys have been a tremendous help! No, ACCS may be correct that it is a hardware problem. If that is the Dell XP disc that came with the computer, and it already has SP2 on it, the hard drive may be failing. You could try a different hard drive to rule out the current drive.
I think Freeman was hoping there may be another way to install XP, via a hidden hard drive partition. You could check for this possibility by using an Ubuntu Linux disc to look at what is the Dell hard drive, or you could put the drive in another computer and see what, if anything, is on it.
You will see the option of performing a System Recovery with warnings about losing all user data on the hard drive. If you're able to get there, bingo, you're golden. That will restore the hard drive to the condition it was in when it brand new, out of the box. You will need to retrieve all the updates from Microsoft since that point, and get rid of any craptacular pre-installed software you do not want.
Have you repeated the process a couple times? If it always freezes exactly at the "37 minutes" mark, I doubt that's failing hardware, if it hangs at different points, I would point to failing hardware. If it's always at the 37 minute mark, then I'd bet it's some older default driver that XP that is screweing it up.
You could try slipstreaming in SP3 and newer drivers. Aah, OK. Thanks for the clarification on OOBE. I've tried the OOBE a couple of times, to no avail. I'll try it again this evening, to see if it works. I told him we would need to reinstall windows. I was kind of shocked we did not have to in the first place. Anyways, So now I am trying to reinstall windows: I can get it to boot from the windows cd, it goes through the standard list of drivers, and at the end says, "setup is starting windows" Then it just hangs there indefinately.
Typically after this, you get to the screen that asks you if you want to install windows, then you hit f8 to agree to there stuff, then you get to partition ect.
I mention these things so you will know what part I am talking about. I have tried a diferent disk, I have tried a windows home disk instead of pro, I have taken the drive out and tried a diferent drive, all with the same results Any advice on what I can do from here, would be greatly appreciated.
Joined Aug 17, Messages 17, It points to a deeper problem, possibly one of faulty RAM. Download and run the RAM test utility from a disk, available from www. Well, it passed the memory test just fine. Pretty much all new parts-memory, mobo, and cpu Any other ideas are totally welcome Joined Mar 5, Messages I had exactly the same problem and found that I had not set the bios to boot from CD first.
As soon as I did this it worked 1st time. Hope this helps. I have it set to boot from the cd, and it boots from the cd just fine The problem occurs after the cd loads all of the drivers needed to install windows, and you see the white words on the bottom of the blue screen, "Setup is starting windows". After, I took out all the cards, and everything connected to the mobo, cept the hard drive, cd-rom, and memory I rebooted, only I accidentally did not hit the button to boot from the cd The machine booted into windows just fine, though it made me do an activation of windows first.
Everything goes fine at first, but the installation appears to hang on "Installing Windows" with 33 minutes remaining, at the point where the message above the progress bar says "Installing Devices". It has been sitting this way for the last hour, cycling through the pretty slides on the rh side of the screen. I have reset the boot order so it boots from the CD first. I have read as many messages as I can that appear to deal with the problem, and the only possibly relevant one that talks about problems while installing devices is a message about upgrading the BIOS.
I would install from the CD shipped with the computer, but I can't find it. If there is a problem with the BIOS, I will need instructions on upgrading it I have access to the net from the newer machine. All forum topics Previous Topic Next Topic. Replies 7. Did you delete and recreate partitions? I rebuilt the partition as part of the install process. I'll look at them more closely. Office Office Exchange Server.
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