Can't install XP or 2K from CD boot

[mooseAndSquirrel]

I ran into a strange problem. My wife's Micron (PIII 733, I think) has always been a bit troublesome with its Windows 98 install. So I went to upgrade her to XP or 2000. I thought I'd boot from CD, format her drive and install a clean copy without any baggage.

But whether it was 2000 Pro, XP Pro or XP home, it got to the screen where it says "Enter to continue, R for repair, F3 ..." and then hung (no response to keyboard).

I tried installing 2000 Pro from the 4 boot disk set, but had the same hangup.

Ultimately, I was able to do a Windows 2000 upgrade to her Windows 98 and things seem ok. But I wonder what the heck could be wrong with the clean install. Maybe it's a BIOS issue? Anyone else experienced this?

 

[Doh!]

It would help to have the specs of your wife's computer.

 

[Muadib]

Yes, give us the specs, but if I had to guess, I'd say she has a usb keyboard, and the bios isn't set to detect it.

 

[mooseAndSquirrel]

No USB Keyboard. It's a micron millenium 733 PIII, 256MB RAM, 20GB drive, CD & CDRW. I'm too lazy to go upstairs and check the BIOS level , but I did note that (a) it doesn't have a virus option and (b) there was an option to support legacy keyboards (or some such wording) which I tried but didn't make a difference.

 

[Doh!]

Well, what does Micron say about the computer's compatibility w/ win2k or xp? Does Micron have any compatibility update for the computer you have? With a packaged setup like yours (ie., Dell, compaq, micron, hp, etc.), it would be better to contact the customer support 'cause they use certain proprietary parts (i.e, motherboard).