Error installing XP

[lezperez]

Hi im trying to re-install XP on a Advent 4490 netbook. The installation would not boot and the recovery partition, although still intact, would also not start. After some searching I stumbled on this forum and proceeded to use the Winsetup 1 beta 4.

Netbook specs:

CPU Intel Atom processor N270 Single Core 1.6Ghz

Chipset Mobile Intel 945GM Express

Memory 1GB DDR2 PC2-6400 SODIMM (1 memory slot. Max 2GB)

Hard Drive 120GB WD1200BEVS-22UST0

CD Drive Not Fitted

Screen 8.9" TFT (native resolution 1024x600)

Video Card Intel 945GM (up to 64MB shared)

Web Cam Built In

Sound Card Realtek ALC662 High Definition Audio

Modem Not Installed

Network Card Realtek 8139 / 810X (Onboard)

LiteOn WN6301L Wireless LAN

Bluetooth

Ports 1x Headphone

1x Microphone

1x LAN

1x VGA

3x USB 2.0

1x Kensington Lock

1x 4-in-1 Card Reader (supports SD, MMC, MS, MS-Pro cards)

Battery J10-3S2200-G1B1 Lithium-Ion Battery

Power Supply ADP-40MH Power supply

Dimensions 28 x 260 x 178 (HxWxD in mm)

Weight 1.12kg

Colour Black/Silver

Made By ECS J10IL3

USB stick: Integral 2gb

So I copied my xp sp2 disc to the root of my drive c:\xpdisc. I slipstreamed SP3 and used dpbase to add mass storage drivers. Used modified ntdetect from this forum. Used rmprepusb, selected boot as hdd, xp, ntfs. Point to the xp disc and click go.

The USb stick boots fine through the txt setup section. Reboot selct option 2 for gui mode. This is where my problem is. Gets as far as "Setup will complete in approx. 24 minutes" then either freezes or gives BSOD. So far Ive had 0x000000007E, 0x0000000008D and some others and something about a driver has damaged the memory pool or something (cant remember now). So Ive read all the faqs etc and im now at a loss what to do. Help please!!!

[ilko_t]

Since you are getting that far you have passed all issues which could be related to the "install from USB" part. Now you are most likely dealing with faulty hardware, inappropriate drivers, damaged source or something along these lines.

Once you get BSOD or error in GUI I'd turn off the computer and run some "portable" OS put on the USB stick to check last lines in the setup log files in \windows folder, there are several of them:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc758337%28WS.10%29.aspx

Look below "Commonly Used Log Files".

As for portable OS this could be Ubuntu, UBCD4Win, WinBuilder LiveXP or the alikes etc. etc.

Quick tip for Ubuntu:

[lezperez]

Well after much trying Ive come to the conclusion that theres a hardware fault somewhere. Just to eliminate the usb from being the problem I formatted the hard drive as dos and copied the i386 folder on and run it from there. This time got as far as "Setup will complete in about 8 minutes" and crashed again only this time the error said the BIOS was not fully acpi compliant. So I disabled acpi during setup by pressing F7 and it still crashed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any ideas on how I can find out what the problem is?

[ilko_t]

...Any ideas on how I can find out what the problem is?

Look at setup log files as mentioned above.

[steve6375]

Just a thought, but is AHCI enabled in the BIOS? If so disable it.

[lezperez]

Thx for the help. Problem was faulty RAM! Put a new stick in and all good!

@steve the BIOS is one of them "user friendly" ones that doesnt let u change anything apart from the boot order!