Windows XP Pro wont install (Black screen)

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jouse

New to the neighborhood

1 Posts

15 Nov 2005, 11:11pm

Windows XP Pro wont install (Black screen)

The Problem:
Windows XP Pro won't install, I get a black screen right at the beginning (after pressing enter at the "Press any key to boot from CD"). http://www.short-media.com/forum/new...newthread&f=8#

The Hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Athlon 64 3500+
Club3D Geforce 7800GT PCI-E
2 x 1GB Kingston 400MHz DDR
Maxtor 160GB HDD (SATA)

Facts:
-Everything works fine in Gentoo Linux
-Windows Setup starts fine when no HDD is connected
-Memory passed 12 hours of Memtest86+
-I have tried with the HDD connected to the Nforce4-SATA controller and to the Silicon Imaga 3114 SATA-RAID controller.
-I've tried with a genuine Windows XP Professional and not-so-genuine Windows XP Pro SP2.

Any thoughts, anyone?

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kzin

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

13 Dec 2005, 9:24pm

Hey I am having the same problem...
--When it worked--
First thing I did on this computer was install linux, then I made a partition (Primary 4) for XP. I installed XP fine on this machine. Going to say that something went wrong completley unrelated to XP or Linux (User error) and I needed to repartition the drive. This time, I tried to plan the deployment a little more.

--When it stopped working--
I created (Primary 1) as NTFS for my XP install, prim2 for /swap, 3 / and 4 was an extended for all of the /home /var kinda things.
Got LInux running the way I like it, and went to install windows on the first partition. However, now when the system boots up, you get the "Press any key to boot from CD..." prompt, you press any key, you see for a brief moment, "Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration" and then the screen goes black.

--Specs--
AMD Athlon 64 3000
MSI K8N Neo4
WD 160GB SATA (SATA2? I dunno)
MSI NX6600 PCIE Video

Any help here would be appreciated.

--Some things I have tried--
rerunning lilo
Installing lilo to MBR
Installing lilo to bootsector
Unistalling lilo (lilo -u /dev/sda)
changing first partition to NTFS
changing first partition to linux
deleting first partition
using separate video output from card
using a different xp cd (OEM)
using a different xp cd (SP2 MSDN copy)

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kzin edited : 13 Dec 2005 at 9:58pm .

kzin

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

13 Dec 2005, 11:34pm

A note:
Disconnecting the SATA cable allowed setup to run as well;
This is telling me that there is something on the drive it doesn't like. Probably the linux partitions? Why, though, did it work the first time?

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profdlp

Off To The Gym

21,407 Posts

14 Dec 2005, 12:20am

I'm sure someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you need to finish off the WinXP installation before you add the linux partition. The linux bootloader will then take care of the boot options end of things.

__________________ ---Prof

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kzin

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

14 Dec 2005, 5:29pm

Ok I solved the problem.
I was thinking that I didn't uninstall the previous XP from the 4th primary partition before I was trying to reinstall to the first. Something told me that there may be something left in the MBR that was confusing XP. It was looking for an XP install on a linux partition.
Through linux I formatted the MBR;
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
Then, from the linux setup, I replaced the partitions with fdisk. Wow, Linux is the superman of operating systems; after replacing the partitions the OS still worked! To anyone trying this, you have to make sure the exact sectors are in the exact same place when you do this or linux will most probably choke.
Well, XP installer works with a clean MBR now.

Hope this helps someone out there.

Thanks for your reply profdlp. I think this may work, but XP likes to stretch itself over the whole drive and use its own "Virtual" partitions. In the past I have found it difficult to install Linux after XP on a fresh disk. If I am wrong please correct me =).

__________________ Free iPod

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profdlp

Off To The Gym

21,407 Posts

14 Dec 2005, 6:34pm

When you get to the point where WinXP is asking which partition to install to it is very easy to just let it take all the unpartitioned space. It is less obvious, but you can also create a custom partition of the size of your choosing, then continue from there. When it's time to do the linux part you just point it toward the remaining unpartitioned space and go from there.

I'm not a linux expert by any stretch - anyone else want to comment on this?

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Straight_Man

Playing with Virtual Painter

3,717 Posts

» Subscriber

14 Dec 2005, 7:57pm

Prof you have it right-- XP FIRST, THEN LINUX. The other way is a real bear of a thing to accomplish. The only other advise I have is to have Linux have lilo in it's partition as you do NOT want to have the XP bootloader overwritten. What I do to shortcut the whole mess is to put linux on maaster HD, XP on slave HD, which is one heck of a lot easier-- then the order is less important.

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Enverex

~-+-~

5,879 Posts

27 Dec 2006, 6:37pm

Quoting jouse

The Problem:
Windows XP Pro won't install, I get a black screen right at the beginning (after pressing enter at the "Press any key to boot from CD"). http://www.short-media.com/forum/new...newthread&f=8#

The Hardware:
Asus A8N-SLI Premium
Athlon 64 3500+
Club3D Geforce 7800GT PCI-E
2 x 1GB Kingston 400MHz DDR
Maxtor 160GB HDD (SATA)

Facts:
-Everything works fine in Gentoo Linux
-Windows Setup starts fine when no HDD is connected
-Memory passed 12 hours of Memtest86+
-I have tried with the HDD connected to the Nforce4-SATA controller and to the Silicon Imaga 3114 SATA-RAID controller.
-I've tried with a genuine Windows XP Professional and not-so-genuine Windows XP Pro SP2.

Any thoughts, anyone?

Did anyone ever work this out? I'm still having this issue on my secondary PC and I remember when I posted about this god knows how long ago (when I saw this link I Google I assumed it was my thread) no-one had any idea then either.

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markjohanson

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

25 Apr 2009, 2:40pm

i have the same problem, something in my computer went wrong and it already had linux also in it. But now when I insert the windows setup cd, there is only a black screen after the sentence ' the setup is checking your computer hardware'. I can stil install redhat linux in my computer. any help would be appreciated, can you tell in detailed how to format the mbr from linux.
thank you

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Enverex

~-+-~

5,879 Posts

25 Apr 2009, 3:06pm

I found out why this happens, it's when a drive in your machine has a MBR that Windows doesn't like. If you are installing Windows on its own drive then disconnect other drives first, if it still happens then it's the drive you're trying to install to which is the problem and you need to wipe the MBR and entire partition table from that drive before Windows XP will install (use 'dd' in Linux to do that).

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markjohanson

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

25 Apr 2009, 9:08pm

Well when I installed linux again, i removed all the ntfs partitions(windows) including all drives. I even installed the linux into whole of the harddisk (160gb) and tried installing windows xp again. Still the black screen shows!

would installing a lower os like 98 or the new windows 7 make a difference?

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Enverex

~-+-~

5,879 Posts

25 Apr 2009, 11:54pm

Quoting markjohanson

Well when I installed linux again, i removed all the ntfs partitions(windows) including all drives. I even installed the linux into whole of the harddisk (160gb) and tried installing windows xp again. Still the black screen shows!

would installing a lower os like 98 or the new windows 7 make a difference?

Doesn't matter, it's the partition table it doesn't like, if you're using the whole drive then you need to WIPE THE MBR and PARTITION TABLE. Nothing else will suffice.

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Thrax

Cat Whisperer

25,154 Posts

25 Apr 2009, 11:55pm

A reformat wipes the mbr.

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Enverex

~-+-~

5,879 Posts

25 Apr 2009, 11:57pm

Quoting Thrax

A reformat wipes the mbr.

Actually a format only wipes the partition you're formatting, it wont wipe the partition table which is what was the issue before. I had to use dd to wipe the first few raw MB of the drive before XP setup would actually start.

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Thrax

Cat Whisperer

25,154 Posts

26 Apr 2009, 12:01am

If you wipe the partition that contained the MBR ("C:"), the MBR is gone.

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markjohanson

New to the neighborhood

3 Posts

26 Apr 2009, 12:55pm

It did the trick. I deleted the MBR from Linux using the 'dd' command this time XP has installed successfully. Thank you for your help

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Windows XP Pro wont install (Black screen)

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