XP Installation Issue

J

jack28282

New Member
Hello,
If anyone had any input on this, I’d really appreciate it. I received a Dell Dimension 8100 1.3 GHz computer that had a bad hard drive in it. It came with what I believe is its original XP SP2 installation disk. So, I pulled a hard drive out of another computer that I have (this hard drive is known to be good because I was just using it and it was working fine). I then used that original installation disk to try and boot up to my this known-to-be-good hard drive.
Here’s what is happening. It actually is booting up OK. At one point in the installation it prompted me for instructions as to how to format this hard drive. I deleted all partitions and told it to do a FAT32. Which apparently it did. I’m seeing progress that is normal on the monitor. The bar is advancing. I’m getting messages that change every minute or so telling about the features of XP. But, . . . it is taking several days for this process to complete itself. Right now it is at the point where it is “finalizing installation.” The DVD player (where the installation disk is at) turns on and off occasionally. This whole thing shouldn’t take days, it should take maybe hours. Does anyone have any idea why it is taking so long? Like I said, even though it is taking so long, it appears to be working otherwise correctly.
Thanks.
 
jack28282 said:
Hello,
If anyone had any input on this, I’d really appreciate it. I received a Dell Dimension 8100 1.3 GHz computer that had a bad hard drive in it. It came with what I believe is its original XP SP2 installation disk. So, I pulled a hard drive out of another computer that I have (this hard drive is known to be good because I was just using it and it was working fine). I then used that original installation disk to try and boot up to my this known-to-be-good hard drive.
Here’s what is happening. It actually is booting up OK. At one point in the installation it prompted me for instructions as to how to format this hard drive. I deleted all partitions and told it to do a FAT32. Which apparently it did. I’m seeing progress that is normal on the monitor. The bar is advancing. I’m getting messages that change every minute or so telling about the features of XP. But, . . . it is taking several days for this process to complete itself. Right now it is at the point where it is “finalizing installation.” The DVD player (where the installation disk is at) turns on and off occasionally. This whole thing shouldn’t take days, it should take maybe hours. Does anyone have any idea why it is taking so long? Like I said, even though it is taking so long, it appears to be working otherwise correctly.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

I'm not really sure. Try the installation process again. Next time, format your partition as an NTFS partition.
 
another ?

OK, I haven’t actually carried out the suggested reformatting in ntfs, yet. This is mainly because whenever I reboot my computer, it continues the process of installing XP at a point that is beyond where the hard drive formatting takes place. And, I don’t know how to get it to start at the beginning.
Anyway, the dvd player works a while and then stops for a long time as I try to install XP. Wouldn’t one expect the dvd player to work continuously until the software is loaded? That it works a while and then stops a long time and then starts on it’s own later. And, only works for a while again. Doesn’t that indicate a problem, right there?
Thanks.
 
OK, what I did was reboot with the installation disk in the CD drive instead of the dvd drive. It was the same situation in that the CD player was turning on and off just like the dvd player. So, my conclusion would be that the problem doesn’t lie with the dvd player.
 
>This is mainly because whenever I reboot my computer, it continues the process of installing XP at a point that is beyond where the hard drive formatting takes place.

So, as a recap: you formatted as FAT32, and towards the end of the install, the program froze, and upon reboot, it goes back to finalizing the installation process, correct?

If that is so, then you need to boot to the CD again. Letting BIOS do it will not work as it will read the CD as an install CD, then the CD will realize half of it is already installed and try to finish it. You need to physically engage the Boot Selector Popup (usually by hitting F8 or something--look as your BIOS is POSTing, it'll say what to hit to enter BSP). Once the Boot screen is up, select either drive (try the DVD one again, it's most likely fine and what happened was a software issue) and hit Enter. If you get a message that says 'Press any key to boot from CD', press a key to allow it. Doing that will cause the CD to boot from the beginning and start the Install process again, rather than pick up where it left off. If all goes well, the CD will load it's temp files and you'll be good to go :)
 
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