I thought i would throw this one at you guys, if my laptop has been running for an hour or so my laptop shuts down at some point during textmode, no error or restart just shuts down, it doesnt matter what media i am using wether it be cd or hdd an unattended disc or original the only difference between cd and hdd is a cd shuts down at the start of textmode and hdd at least starts to copy files and may even get as far as saving configuration but as it doesn't complete it fails when i boot it up and shuts down, however if i leave it off for an hour or so it will fly through with no issues whatsoever, i just can't understand it as it never happens at any other time and have even run burn in tests and repeated benchmarks to put as much stress on the system as possible to try and get to the bottom of it but it only ever happens during textmode and only if my machine has been running, it's driving me nuts and i'm very close to throwing the stupid piece of **** out of the window and buying a new one, please please please somebody come up with a solution before i do something silly..lol..

Is it overheating? Try this = place some spacers under each of the feet to lift it like a half inch above the surface it is on. My laptop used to overheat all the time after about a hour or so.

No i don't think so, i did originally think that myself so i went and bought a laptop cooling stand and it doesn't explain why i can boot into any other os, i can install vista or boot to a live linux cd or bartpe but if i try and install xp it fails only at textmode, a little insight, this is my usuall way of installing xp. 1hdd 3partitions, 3rd partition is recovery one, i boot to bartpe it backs up some files formats my 1st partition starts winnt32 then restarts and carries on with setup, however because it fails i have to restart the whole process again so i have to have it shut down for an hour them boot it up to get it to work which kinda defeats the object of unattended