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xp install crashes on

  • Thread starter swords
  • Start date
So I formatted the harddrive and the install program crashes at the "install devices" screen during the setup procedure. I've unplugged everything but the keyboard, mouse and monitor. I wouldn't think the headphones being plugged in would have made it crash?

Trying a second shot takes 2 hrs to format 500 Gs!'

I saw that my disk is not a retail version either but a liscenced copy for distribution with a new PC copy "OEM" BS. I have contacted the seller already.

Is it possible the quad core processor and an extreme SLI motherboard is too powerful for XP sp3?
 
What devices do you have on the motherboard? If you have RAID you need to install additional drivers. During the install there is a message to press a function key if you need to do this. You need some sort of removable media with the drivers on it (floppy, CD, flashdrive etc.)

What motherboard - make and model - do you have?

Ha - two hours is nothing. I remember it taking two or three days to "comserf" a 40 megabyte drive to install Netware on it.
 
RAID is two drives running in tandem isn't it? I have one for the OS and programs and the other is just storage. So as far as I know I have no raid system.

I clean installed XP 64 from the disk that came with my PC just fine a few months ago. I installed my video driver and motherboard disks after installing windows last time.

Motherboard: P5N-E SLI ASUS Graphic intergrated motherboard
Video card: Nvidia 8800
4 GB Ram
Intel Core 2 Quad Core Processor
 
D'oh! Sorry to hear about your troubles man. I think NaN is right - may be a driver issue. I'd definitely get on that seller's case, and maybe contact eBay and PayPal as well. Didn't you say this seller has feedback in the tens of thousands? That's enough to make for a juicy piracy lawsuit - if they give you the runaround, you might mention tipping off Microsoft. (They're probably got bigger fish to fry, but who knows - maybe you'll catch them on a day when their lawyers are bored.) Kind of a bastard move, but so is selling pirated software to unsuspecting users.
What's "comserf?" Is that like not using water during a drought? :D
~Joe

PS - RAID lets you use multiple physical drives as a single "disk," so far as your computer can tell. But even if you have your two drives working independently, you may have them connected to the motherboard via a RAID hard drive controller (IIRC.) In which case, you'd need RAID drivers, even if you don't make use of the special features RAID configurations offer. As for how you set it up before - sounds suspicious. Makes me wonder if the disk you have might be a distribution with special hardware-specific software parts that don't play nice with your machine.
 
Well, it's not a blank disk or something, it came shrinkwrapped over a 6" x 9" Microsoft booklet that has a sticker that says:
"This OEM software is to be delivered with a new PC" which is the same thing mine says for XP64 but that one works. But this definately isn't a retail version.

Do you think if I ordered it from Amazon warehouses (not 3rd party seller) it would be official and work? I hate to have a whole new system built just to get the XP32 bit OS!
 
I'm not super familiar with different Windows distributions. I'm not certain, but I do believe that Microsoft makes OEM disks that are targeted for specific hardware. Even if it was brand new and in the same shrinkwrap it left the Microsoft plant in, it's possible that it just isn't compatible. Don't take my word for that, though.
Ordering from Amazon depends. Isn't most of the stuff on Amazon not actually sold directly by them anymore? I thought they had become a sort of marketplace type venture. I would expect Amazon proper to be on the level, but I've definitely heard of some shady operators on their site as well.
Are you certain that your hardware can run in 32-bit mode? At this hour my computer architecture classes seem very distant... I know it's theoretically possible to use the same processor for 32-bit and 64-bit bytecodes, but I haven't the slightest clue if manufacturers bother to support such a feat.
Best luck - sorry to hear it's still giving you grief.
~Joe
 
When I had the PC built he asked me what OS I wanted after I chose all the other hardware first and I said XP 64 cos it sounded good (not knowing it had the goofy installer issues) so I assume I could have had either one.

Reviews on amazon of this XP Home edition SP3 "System Builders edition" is that many people are buying it to overwrite Vista or run it paralel on a mac and they seem to get along OK with it. The actual official retail version is XP Home Edition SP2... aparently!???

But that entry XP Home Edition SP2 is sold as fullfilment by Amazon meaning shipped from their actual warehouses.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Home-FULL-VERSION/dp/B00022PTRU

---------- Post added at 04:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:33 AM ----------

Here is a link to the stage at which the install quits:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/operatingsystems/ss/instxpclean2_6.htm

The second attempt just crashed (the PC just turns off) so obviously it's a no go. I'm just curious if it's a hardware conflict with the software or just this disk. I don't wanna spend another few hundred to get the same thing happening.

reformatting again with the 64 disk just crashed now, ugh! it really is Friday the 13th! lol

(or was when I began this journey!)

---------- Post added at 04:25 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:10 AM ----------

Crashed on attempted reformat clean install of 64 bit again... I think I'll give up for tonight!
 
I have a P5K. The only thing that was tricky was that I had to load the JMicron controller drivers so XP could recognize the Ultra DMA DVD-RW drive. I've since dumped the drive for a SATA DVD-RW so I disabled the JMicron controller completely.

There should be a utility to create a driver disk on the motherboard installation disk. Check to see if there is are later version on the Asus website though. If you need the controller or RAID you need a driver disk and press F6 I think it is at the appropriate time during the XP install.

There's a way to slipstream the drivers into a custom made XP installation CD. Google "slipstream XP drivers"

And if you partitioned your hard drive make sure the partition you are installing XP on is formatted.

Joe: comserf (or however was spelled) was a low level formatting utility to prepare hard drives for Novell's proprietary disk format. This was back in the late 80s early 90s. It was a very demanding format but one of the reasons why you'd find Novell servers that had been running 700+ days straight without reboots.
 
  • #10
Use english NAN! When you think of me and computers think in the simplest terms possible. I sometimes hide behind my desk chair and poke at it with a stick! :D

Like I said, I do not have RAID controller that I know of. I do have SATA hard drives, however I did not have to do anything extra to get it running when I did a clean install last summer. It did not require extra drivers that time, I just put in my XP64 disk and simply followed the steps in this link you gave me at the time:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/operatingsystems/ss/instxpclean1.htm

According to step 3 of that link you only need to F6 and do the extra driver if you are using XP SP1. And that's way at the begining of the setup.

I get all the way through the DOS setup, 2 hours of drive partition formatting and the initialization of windows and then it crashes on finalizing windows setup.

Reinstalling XP64 today or at least giving it a try! lol
 
  • #11
Even if you didn't need drivers last time, explore all the possibilities.
I liken my general experience with getting Microsoft products to work with the Chronicles of Narnia. The pathway to Narnia never opens twice; it'll be somewhere else each new time you go looking for it. The same is true of Microsoft how-to's. (Especially when it comes to MS Office.)
~Joe
 
  • #12
If I remember correctly, from way back when I was in college, the term RAID stands for a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. And I don't think having just two hard drives is enough to call a number of hard drives a RAID. Of course, I am not an expert; although I do have a degree in Information Technology... I just feel lucky that I can keep my computer and my family's/friend's computers working properly. I wish I could be of more assistance. The only way I can help most people is if I am at their house, sitting at their computer. I wish you the best of luck trying to install Windows, swords.
 
  • #13
I'm on the 3rd or 4th attempt to get the 64 version back online, I saw raid drivers geing installed as the boot was on it's way to the format harddrive step of he reinstall.

The ebay seller said to call them 9-5 business hours so maybe they can tell me something. Perhaps I have to mess about in BIOS to make sure the machine knows I want to make it do 32 bit? ???

One consolation is that to build a similar beefy quad core system with new Intel bits and have it delivered to my house with XP32 bit is only 1/3 the price of this one built in 06 or early 07.
 
  • #14
A true RAID can use as little as two disks - either both disks contain the same data, so that if one fails you can still read the other one, or both disks are joined together so that you effectively have one disk that has the sum capacity of the two drives. You don't get the really nice benefits until you have three or more drives, though. Many RAID controllers can still operate a single disk in a non-RAID context, though - a number of the Gateways I service at work need RAID drivers, even though they have just one disk.
So do you ever see a BSOD when these installs fail, swords? That the machine is just flat out restarting sounds suspicious. You might be on to something with the idea of a BIOS setting. Have you done any research on doing a 32-bit downgrade with your motherboard/processor/drive controller(s)?
~Joe
 
  • #15
No BSOD. What happens is the partition and formating program will start as usual and then the machine just shuts off whenever it feels like it, sometimes even before the reformatting begins. It doesn't shut down at one given point in any one attempt. So it's actually not just in the device installer, that's just where it happened to do it the first time last night. This last time I only made it through the 2 hr reformating the partition and it got to about 60% of copying the files for windows then it shut off.
 
  • #16
Weird...
I'm a little stumped. Have you changed the hardware setup since your last successful OS install? Almost sounds like you've got a bad connection somewhere, or a heat problem. Are the fans straining? (Assuming they're variable-speed fans.) Does it have irregular delays at startup? Do you have another hard drive you could swap in?
~Joe
 
  • #17
The fans run from the time I turn it on until it turns itself off, I pulled off the side case last night to watch all the inner workings... maybe the gerbil 2.0 is dead! :D

The case is dusty but I never had it shut off recently until I started this project. Does reformatting and installing the OS tax everything make it run warmer than usual? It would be sweet if just blasting it out does the trick! I blew as hard as I could but it's not a steady 80psi. I will check all the interior connections and try blasting out the case tomorrow with my monstrously loud air compressor when the downstairs neighbors leave or at least are up and about.

I hope it works, my neck really hurts using this laptop. ugh! How do people use these things all the time.
 
  • #18
If it's trying to zero out the hard drive during the reformat by writing over the entire thing, that might lead to some unusual stresses in the drive itself. But generally, installers are very computationally-light processes.
As for the comfort of laptops, I'd tend to agree with you. One thing I've noticed recently is that most of my peers at school that use them seem to have a serious slouch. (At work I sit next to a guy three or four inches taller than me, but he keeps his monitor as low as possible where I have mine set as high as the stand allows.) Hard to tell which came first though.
~Joe
 
  • #19
Ok, several thoughts. It sounds like a hardware problem but not necessarily so.

It could be the power supply is flaking out. Or the hard drive. Or the DVD/CD drive. Or the installation CD is bad/corrupted.

Blow out the dust. With the AC power cable unplugged, re-seat the power connectors to the motherboard (disconnect, and reconnect - clean with air if you wish - recommended).

In the BIOS settings enable S.M.A.R.T. HDD monitoring. Since you are not using RAID make sure it is disabled in BIOS.

Check the install CD. If you have Nero CD/DVD burning software there is a disc scan function in the Nero CD-DVD Speed utility to see if the disc is readable. If you don't have that you can download the free version of ISO-Buster or just copy the entire disc to your laptop. Read errors will become apparent if they exist (although it could be the drive on your desktop).

It could be the XP installation is not detecting power management properly and the system is shutting down because of this. When you first boot from the install CD you'll see an option on the bottom of the screen to press F6 to install third party drivers. Press F5 instead and this should give you the Hardware Abstraction Layer menu choices - you want either ACPI multiprocessor or Advanced Configuration and ACPI computer for your motherboard.

Other recommended actions for problem installs are to clear the CMOS on the motherboard (see the user manual for the motherboard) or install with only one stick of RAM (don't ask me why).

Before resetting the CMOS I would backup the settings using the BIOS Tools options and write down any of the CPU and memory voltage and timing settings.
 
  • #20
Haha, this is becoming quite educational for me. Thanks NaN! (Sorry it had to come at the price of your time and frustration, swords.)
~Joe
 
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