Trying to reformat/reinstall but...

[rjx]

I'm trying to reformat my system and reinstall windows (its been strong for 8mos and its random quirkiness and things not working have finally got annoying enough) Now I have made a nice customized boot cd, as well as have my trusty original. I toss the cd in to boot, Press Enter to boot CD.. Blue screen shows up.... STICKS THERE... NO PROGRESS, no grey bar down bottom... first I thought it may be a bad cd of mine, went back to my original cd, and copies of the original, same problem.

Definitely didnt have this problem last install, but i've upgraded the bios just incase. Also disabled all onboard hardware not needed to install (like extra sata controller etc) and it's still not helping. It's not locking up either, since I can tap numlock and see it respond, it just sits there in a complete blue screen w/ Windows Setup in upperleft.

I know the entire pc is working fine as I am typing this message on it.

I've tried about everything I can think of, and I been working on PC's quite a while. (even part of my job) My guess is something of my hardware is causing it to stick like this, just cant think what...

if anyone has anyone has any ideas much appreciated..

ive been googling and searching this forum and others with not much result.

Thanks

[gui_m]

I had a similar problem. It only fixed itself when I change the master hard drive...

[Lost Soul]

im not sure if this would help you out but try using windowsPE or BartPE its a preinstall inviornment which may help fix this issue

[Cartoonite]

Not sure since I've never tested it, but attempting to run an uA install with autopartition=1 and no partition available with no installed OS and enough room to install XP could cause this error. That would also explain why gui_m was able to resolve the issue by swapping out the main hard drive.

Unless you are running your uA from an answer file on a floppy disk, though, it doesn't explain why you get the same error when trying to run from your original CD....

Just a thought.

[Jose Sigafus]

You can always force the installation. Start computer from a Windows 98/ME emergency boot disk. From the MS-DOS prompt, run SmartDrive disk caching utility (Smartdrv.exe); and then start Windows Setup using the Winnt.exe command. Don't use Winnt32.exe because it won't run from dos. You can also run fdisk first to eliminate the non-dos partition if it's NTFS.

Bios boot order>floppy,cd-rom,hd.

[rjx]

Thanks for all the tips, buncha stuff to try, stuff to try!

just so odd this didnt happened before, now all of a sudden...

will keep you guys posted...

[OcDevil]

You can try to apply the "BIOS defaults" in the BIOS may also be called "Setup defaults"

Also try to disable any BIOS shadowing.

A last tip, try another/other RAM modules, I have experienced quite a few times that Windows XP/2000 setup would fail or go into BSOD because of faulty RAM modules.