XP needs a clean install but cant get past boot

[tarquel]

Hi all

(be warned, you'll need a coffee for this)

This may be completely obvious and its probably the fact that I've been working all day and working on this problem for the past few hours that I'm really missing something here but please help me out regardless please

Right...

I decided to wipe a system for a friend and went through a nice long process of backing up most of the stuff on his data partition - altho not gonna wipe this, it was a precautionary measure

Anyhow...this took a fair while as there was 5 users in all...

I had a built a XP CD with SP2 slipstreamed and mostly unattended (except for the partitoning part - naturally - and the product key) with the sysprep tools at the end being optional (with it being a reinstall, not sure whether he needed to agree to the EULA again but this aint the issue here)

Anyhow...booted the CD fine and it was going thru the inital stages of loading things into the memory i.e. volume manager, drivers, windows setup, etc. and then I got to:

"Setup is starting Windows"

(the one where it would say if you weren't using a answer file Welcome to Windows XP setup - or something similar - its been so long since I haven't used a answer file, that I cant remember the norm hehe)

Well at this point it just hung and the keyboard appears to be locked out.

I'm used to a slight pause but I was sitting there ages & I thought that it was definately not going any further.

I thought it might be the cd build I had made so I tried another one that I'd done (and tested previously with no probs) and no luck there - same thing.

Then tried his original XP Home CD (I forget the SP level) and exactly the same.

As it was running pretty hot, even for a AMD, at 75C I thought I'd let it cool down first and turned it off for a while.

Tried again and the same thing happened - temp was about 59C - but even so, i thought that cant be right.

I know it isnt the CD drive (DVD/CD-RW combo - Liteon) as its a fairly new one and it was working perfectly in windows and in initially booting, so I can only think its something else.

Any suggestions on this as we've always had trouble with this PC. Its a Q-TEC (old old case & PSU) which is bad for starters and the Gigabyte board in it - fairly new revision - I forget the model so I dont know if its the latest... I'm not convinced it is particually great either. The memory is some nasty cheap stuff too (256MB PC133) and I would have said that this, the PSU & the overheating issues are a combined affect here but I dont know.

Please please please could anyone help shed some light on this one (those that havent fallen asleep that is hehe)?

Many Regards & a pint or 10 for the one who can help me sort it.

Nath

[gamehead200]

Have you tried replacing the RAM with some spare RAM you had somewhere? How about the HD, has it been having any problems?

[tarquel]

Wow!... quick response gamehead

Nope...not had a chance yet (it was 12:40am by the time I'd finished so far ) ...not sure if I've got any better RAM lying around but hope so

HD...no problems that I've aware of - seems quite nippy and working as it should.

Regards,

N.

[splendid]

I would consider doing the following

1. BIOS flash

2. make sure the CPU fan is installed correctly. I have seen the CPU fan being installed backward showed the sysmptom you described.

[tarquel]

yep...I'll have to see if there's a new bios revision on the site, it might be worth a look.

Regarding the HSF (CPU fan), I doubt its that - altho it sounds like a obvious thing - because I have a whole range of them at work and they all dont run very well - all running very hot. Tried reinstalling win98se on one of them and it was a really sluggish process....until it started crash and messing up.

Regards,

N.

[nolookingca]

Dust? *gets a image of giant evil dust bunnies (yes, the literal kind) in head*