Problems with an XP installation

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited March 2010 in Science & Tech
I'm having trouble getting XP Home installed on a computer. This is something I've done many times, and have never seen this problem before.

Once the OS CD is in and you turn the computer on, after it tells you to hit any key to boot from CD, the next screen after that is a blue screen with "Windows Setup" in the top left.

Then in a few seconds, at the bottom of the screen, it'll start saying how it is installing some stuff and getting ready to go.

But in THIS computer's case, it doesn't get that far. It just sits on the blue screen with Windows Setup in the top left, and the words at the bottom never appear. I let it go 10 -20 minutes a few times. I've tried clearing the CMOS, pulling the motherboard battery out and draining all power off the motherboard, a couple different hard drives and CD drives, setting the BIOS screen to 'optimal defaults' and to 'failsafe defaults', changing the boot order, making sure the drives were listed with the CD-ROM 1st and the hard drive 2nd, etc.

Nothing seems to work.

I also tried pulling and reseating the RAM sticks.

It's a Socket 775 motherboard with a P4 3.0 Ghz cpu in it, 512 ram in 2 256 mb sticks, the motherboard is an Intel 915 GM chipset version 1.0 .

Any ideas?:confused2

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Try running the PC with only one of the sticks of RAM.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I tried cleaning the RAM sticks and installing them 1 at a time, in each of the 4 slots, and I tried it with both RAM sticks. Didn't make any difference. I also used a couple other DDR 3200 / 400 RAM sticks I had laying around, they did not work either.

    The WD 200 GB hard drive that was in the computer was shot, I confirmed that by hooking it up in 2 other computers and they couldn't find the drive either.

    But this computer DID load up Intrepid Ibex smoothly and with no problems. If I had any experience in Ubuntu I'd have it fold on that.

    Right now I've got an OLD 15 GB hard drive formatting in my main PC, then I'll install 98 on it, then once it is hooked up to this other PC, maybe it'll work then and I can get it loaded up to XP or at least Windows 2000.

    Any other ideas what the failure might be? Something on the motherboard, maybe?
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    have you run memtest? how are your temps, and what is your PSU?
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    Haven't run memtest yet, temps are normal (below 40C), power supply is a generic 350 watt unit. I'll have to use the CDROM ISO for memtest tomorrow. And I'll try changing some drive cables too.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    edited March 2010
    I got it working. All in one shot, I reseated the original memory sticks in slots #3 and #4, changed the power supply to a 380 watt unit (The old 350 watt one had a 20 pin connector on a 24 pin motherboard), changed the IDE cable, tossed in an original (no service packs) XP boot disk, and it loaded it up just fine.

    After some looking online for an ethernet driver, I found one on the board manufacturer's (ECS) website, a Realtek 8139, and got the ethernet working.

    Now it's updating from the Microsoft site, getting service packs and other stuff.
Sign In or Register to comment.