Problems with XP install freezing.

[Albion]

I am trying to install XP on my new machine and I am having some problems. When I put the CD it and tell the machine to boot from it I get the "Setup is inspecting your computers hardware configuration...." then the screen goes black and nothing happens. If I attempt to boot from a Linux Redhat Fedora CD that I burned everything boots just fine. The XP CDs are not burned, I have tried a Technet XP SP2 CD, MSL CD and a retail CD, all do the same thing. I have also tried moving my CDrom around from IDE slave to Secondary Master and nothing seems to work. I am assuming that the CD doesn't like something about my configuration...

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

-Al

 

[bcastner]

Prior to choosing to install Windows, the menu shows a Hardware Compatability test. Run that first.

 

[Albion]

The only thing I see is the message I mentioned above. Before that all I see is the BIOS message "Press any key to boot from CD".

-Al

 

[Albion]

I solved this problem. For some reason XP didn't like the Linux install and Dell Admin partition on the drive. It seemed like XP setup was scanning the entire 250gig drive for something before it would give me the blue XP setup screen. When I tried to install with a smaller previously installed Linux drive it gave me the same problem but after 2 minutes or so it came up with the Blue setup screen and worked fine. I am assuming that since a 8gig drive took 2 minutes the 250gig would take about a half hour or so.

So I went into the 2000 setup and deleted the partitions on the 250gig. Once this was done the XP setup started right up.

-Al

 

[Castor66]

Was linux installed on this computer at some stage in the past? IT's always been a problem with the MBR getting screwed around with after Linux has been on it. Generally the simplest way to fix that particular problem is to boot with a normal boot floppy and then run FDISK /MBR. Bingo - problem gone.