XP fails to load

T

TheBishop

New Member
My father-in-law at the age of 76 finally decided to get a computer and learn about the internet.

I fixed him up an old pc, 1gig xp 512memory and 40 gighd, and he loves it.

After about 11 months or last week he got a bug and it wiped his HD clean.

Since he only reads the news and visits ebay, he has no information anyone can steal.

I ran fdisk, format, and tried to reload his store bought XP system CD, but it fails or stops at 34 minutes left to install windows xp. It's the same xp cd installed the first time without any trouble.

I've tried 3 times to install xp and it stops at 34 minutes each time. i let it run overnight or 12 hours, an it still sits at 34 minutes.

I did try to install an old windows 98se and it loaded fine, I have a windows me upgrade cd and it loaded just fine and complete.

So I tried again the XP cd total reinstall (reformat and load clean and new) and it failed at 34 minutes.

I have several older pc's so I gave him a 933 mhz and it took the xp cd and today he can and got it and just now he sent an email thanking me for the 933.

Question... What stops the xp install at 34 minutes, the system freezes?
 
I would say a hardware failure or memory issue. Did you try removing and reseating the memory?
 
I reset both memory and tried XP CD anain and the XP install freezes again at the 34 minutes left mark.
Indicator at the bottom right that moves during install has stopped, the frame freezes, and mouse control is frozen.
The green bar at the bottom stops while "Installing Devices," if that helps.

Any ideas....
 
I found the problem

After days of trying to reload XP on a 1g cpu I got it to work.

The problem was a defective sound card. I have loaded a hundred PCs in my time but never was defective pci card an influence on a window load.

I had the PC open during install, and decided to pull the pci cards out while the system was still on and frozen, stuck at the 34 minutes left to finish mode. I pulled out one card, then the second out without any change still frozen, but as soon as I pulled the sound card out the system XP flashed on the monitor and jumped to 33 minutes, then 32, 31, and within 5 minutes XP loaded and the PC is up an running again.

Refusing to give up I pulled the modem, no change, pulled the network card, no change, pulled the sound card and instanctly the XP install continued to completion.

I just wanted you all to know.............Thanks
 
Im glad that worked out well even though that might have been risky business. For the record i think you could have destroyed something else under a load. Never heard it done like that before and would not have.
Oh well........worked out fine.
 
Yeah, definately wouldn't be removing add in cards while the machine is on. Thats definately a no no.
 
I was feeling that the system was probably shot, so if I happened to short something out, I would just use it for parts.

And......... I had sat there through so many XP install tries, watching it stall at 34 minutes to completion, I wanted to see what would happen. Actually it was exciting for a moment to see the frozen install come back to life and the clock count down 33,32,31 and finally finish.

It probably would have install correctly if I had shut it down, pulled the card and restarted, but I was getting tired.

I was ready to canabalize the case.........
 
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