What a mess...

[shuckthecorn]

I have been put in charge of fixing a compaq that froze during an XP installation. It had to be forced to shut down and did not continue to install when re-booted. It just gets to XP's opening screen and eventually freezes. The XP compatability check was not run prior to install, incompatability is my guess on why it stalled during instalation, and I cannot get it to boot from the XP CD even though it is set to boot from CD 1st in the Bios. The system is a Compaq presario with a 400mhz processor, 15 gig HD, and 256K ram. Any reason to believe it can be fixed without a complete re-format of the drive?

 

[mithrilhall]

I might have a few work arounds for you.

1. Update your BIOS
2. <--- This is what I did.
When I attempted to install XP on my 800MHz Duron/Asus motherboard with over 384RAM I had issues.

When I tried to upgrade I got an error saying that C: had corrupt data on it (or something like that) so I decided to do a fresh install. Same problem, so I put ME on and ran Scandisk to see if I had bad clusters or something and nothing came up (shouldn't have - it was a new hard drive). After many attempts at installing XP as an upgrade or as a fresh install I got really pissed. By this point I figured it had to be a BIOS issue since my hard drive was fine.

This is what I did:

I took out the hard drive and put it into my other computer (just swapped out the hard drives) - this was a AMD K2 - 350MHz with 256RAM. Installed XP with no problems. Took out the hard drive and put it back in the original case with the Duron chip/Asus motherboard. Worked like a charm. I had no problems after this. Granted, I should have looked into upgrading my BIOS but this is just the way I did it.

 

[snekone]

Wow I would wait on using this technique to install XP.. If you are aware of it, XP thinks your hardware is still installed even if it's out of your system.. I've had some problems after I installed a new motherboard and network card using this method, so I suggest you flash your bios first and then try to install.. This will work better, guaranteed!

 

[ie6user]

Indeed, the 1st thing to look at in there cases if for a BIOS update; also, make sure that (if possible) ACPI is enabled in your BIOS settings...

After that you normally should be able to boot from the CD, and install (it should detect the prior attempt, and depending on the nature of the problem it will either try to repair or start afresh). But as you are unable to boot from CD, you could download the boot diskettes (about 6 or so) (

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33291

for the PRO version, or

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/release.asp?releaseid=33290

for the HOME version), but I seem to recall something about no resume from a failed CD-ROM started setup when booting from diskette..

Another alternative (normally not recommended, but in the case of a failed setup it *is* recommended): just create a small partition on your disk(s), and install Win98 or later on that; from that installation run the windows XP install from the CD.

Do *not* upgrade, just perform a clean install on the empty partition / unpartitioned space; the advantage of this is, that the setup would go to the windowsupdate site to perform the Dynamic Update, (assuming internet connectivity), and get updated boot drivers, which it does NOT get when installing from CD-Boot.

Wether this will solve your problems is another thing, but it is worth a try, of you were going to reinstall anyway...

---

saybibi();

// john

#include <stddiscl.h>

 

[hchman]

I would just format and reinstall. If that did not work go from there. All of these other suggestions are time consuming and iffy. try the easiest things first.