Problems doing fresh install WinXP Home

Sub9grey

A friend of mine is trying to do a fresh install of WinXP home edition, and is having problems. The computer is an older one (ASUS motherboard A7V660 with an Athlon XP 2600) in which the hard rive went bad. He went ahead and bought a new hard drive, and went ahead and bought a newer case. These are the only components he's replaced...everything else are the same components that were working before.

The problem is this: During a fresh installation of WinXP (Home edition SP1), the WinXP process is always restarting & recycling itself in a never ending loop. It's restarting itself after all the initial files are copied, and it checks to see what previous versions of Windows are on the computer. It never gets to the screen where it asks for the Product ID Key. When it restarts itself, it always goes back through the selection menu and such forth as if this it's the first time doing the process.

Any help would be great! Thanks.

Kentigern

When it restarts itself, it always goes back through the selection menu and such forth as if this it's the first time doing the process.

Does the selection menu give you a choice to boot from hard drive - if so choose this option - windows should then continue to install.

Sub9grey

I'll have to ask, but I know in the past when I've done a fresh install, I've had the BIOS set to boot from the CD-ROM as the primary while installing XP. I did walk him through setting that up. Don't you usually wait until the install is complete before switching the BIOS back to hard drive as primary boot device?

Kentigern

I have known it to happen before, when the cd gets a head of its self - so to speak,- you then get a menu asking if you want to boot from cd or hard disk. At this point you need to tell it to boot from hard disk. This can happen a few times before the install is finished.

If this is the case (above), the installer will have to remain throughout install.
Once install is complete, switch BIOS back to hard drive as primary boot.

Sub9grey

Thanks for the info. I called him up and relayed this, and he tried this method. Still no luck!

Kentigern

Just on the off chance - is his windows cd an upgrade version ?

This could cause looping - if the install is looking for an earlier version of windows

clear_darkness

Do you have a different windoze cd that they can try? I've had a similar problem before, it turned out that the cd was actually bad. I know that's kinda a stretch but it's possible. Yeah, but do be sure about that boot sequence because that will definitely do it.

Sub9grey

Thanks for all the replies.

Another friend of mine took a look at the computer, and was able to fix it. He said he re-partitioned the new drive to make the partition that XP was trying to install to >130 gig. He wasn't sure why it made it work, but for some reason, it worked so XP installed.