XP Pro Boot Problem

[adminbydefault]

I am having a strange problem booting with a new Install of XP Pro. I have a new drive, I formatted using NTSF with a clean install of XP Pro. The install goes fine untill it gets to the part where it says it will reboot my system. At this point it just hangs. No messages, no errors etc... I have tried to coldboot to get past this point and it appears to boot but it just goes to a black screen? I have run hardware diagnostics on the machine and everything appears to be working okay, I have run chkdsk /p on the drive and it reports no errors. I have removed all the cards and plugs and reseated them to make sure nothing is loose. Still same problem. I feel like it may be a hardware issue but I am not sure. I have gone through the XP repair process and still nothing. Any ideas as to what may be causing this behavior would be much appreciated. At this point I am at a loss.

Thanks in advance

Adminbydefault

 

[jimp56]

what type of hard drive, IDE or SATA? also - is this the only hard drive in the pc?

lastly, have you pared down the system to essential peripherals only for troubleshooting? In other words, install xp with only video, ram, kb mouse -- no firewire, usb devices, etc connected internal or external. (reformat before reinstall)

 

[htmlman]

Is the computer old enough to have to use the power button to turn it off? Is that the way you had to turn the old system off after it gave the splash screen it is safe to turn the computer off?

 

[adminbydefault]

Jimp56,

IDE hard drive. No its not the only drive in the pc. The orginal drive is still in place. At first I thought the problem was with the MBR of the orginal drive. I then slaved the old drive and put a new drive in as the master and installed XP pro on the new drive.

The only other Card I could remove is the Net Card, which I have also replaced. I could give that a try though.

Thanks for the reply

 

[adminbydefault]

htmlman,

Yes the computer is old enough to have to use the power off button to turn it off.

 

[linney]

Anything like what is mentioned here?

Setup stops responding or displays an unrecoverable error message

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811267&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Windows Setup Hangs When "Setup Is Starting Windows" Screen Appears

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=217073

How to force a Hardware Abstraction Layer during an upgrade or an installation of Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340/EN-US/

 

[adminbydefault]

linney,

Thanks for the post. I tried to for the HAL to two or three different configs, still have the same problem. The other two links really do not apply.

At this point I have removed all non-essential cards and devices. Formated the new drive, installed the software new, tried to force a new HAL in all cases I still have the same behavior. The software appears to load fine, when its done loading and says its going to restart the system hangs. I have left it in the state for hours just to make sure it wasnt still working. I have updated the Bios with the lastest release for this machine which is supposed to be 2000 and XP compatible. I have swapped the CDROM drive, and memory and even replaced the processor. I have run hardware diagnostics on the machine and everything reports okay. I am obviously missing something though. Any other thoughts would be much appreciated before I take a sledge hammer to it.

Thanks

Adminbydefault

 

[linney]

Does your Bios have any virus scanning that you could turn off?

Just out of experimental interest would you have any success if you temporarily formatted to FAT32 and then tried an install?

Again experimenting, do you have an old 9x operating system to see if that might go in?

Those links I posted tell you what log files to check to get a better picture of the failing XP install. Maybe you could read them in another machine or use something like BartPE?

You might be able to make use of BartPE (a mini XP self contained on a bootable CD and run from CD).

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/