Failed XP install, HELP HARDWARE GURUS!!

[Diesel]

I just bought a new video card, and wanted to do a fresh install of windows XP. However, VERY early in the setup process it freezes; after it goes through all the necessary drivers. It says on the gray bar on the bottom of the screen "Setup is now starting windows". It hangs here, then my monitor goes blank (no video output), and the computer just runs. There is no activity because my HDD leds don't flash or anything after this. I tried doing a 2k install, and it dies at the same point. This is a clean install, on a formatted disk. I doubt my new video card is a factor, becuase it doesn't even get to past the DOS portion of the install. I am suspecting some kind of memory issue or soemthing in the bios. Here is the rest of my hardware information. I have tried the install with only these components installed.

Athlon T-bird 1.33
Iwill kk266 motherboard
3com NIC
Aopen DVD drive
Sony floppy drive.
Geforce4 ti4200
256 MB Crucial DDR ram

If you guys can help or direct me to a solution I will greatly appreciate it.

jon

 

[GAZZA]

Are you using a good enough PSU in your case , from what I have read those GF4 cards sure do suck some juice along with your AMD setup .

As a test have you tried installing Win2k/XP with your original video card ?

 

[Demonicon]

Originally posted by: Dieselj
I just bought a new video card, and wanted to do a fresh install of windows XP. However, VERY early in the setup process it freezes; after it goes through all the necessary drivers. It says on the gray bar on the bottom of the screen "Setup is now starting windows". It hangs here, then my monitor goes blank (no video output), and the computer just runs. There is no activity because my HDD leds don't flash or anything after this. I tried doing a 2k install, and it dies at the same point. This is a clean install, on a formatted disk. I doubt my new video card is a factor, becuase it doesn't even get to past the DOS portion of the install. I am suspecting some kind of memory issue or soemthing in the bios. Here is the rest of my hardware information. I have tried the install with only these components installed.

Athlon T-bird 1.33
Iwill kk266 motherboard
3com NIC
Aopen DVD drive
Sony floppy drive.
Geforce4 ti4200
256 MB Crucial DDR ram

If you guys can help or direct me to a solution I will greatly appreciate it.

jon

From my experience, it's your video card that is the problem, if you still have your old video card, install that and setup windows. Then simply put back in the new card. BTW, I have no clue as to why this happens.

If this is the case I guess you ought to call for an RMA.

 

[Gasman]

One more thing to check-

Is the virus warning enabled in your BIOS?

Try disabling this, so that XP can write to your boot sector during install.

From lostcircuits.com, which I just happened to be reading lately:

Virus Warning (Enabled)

In most cases, the first entry in Advanced BIOS features is Virus Warning which can either be enabled or disabled. When enabled, the BIOS performs a Pre-Operating System Check for viruses that could possibly modify the bootsector of the HDD. If any modification or scheduled modification is encountered, the boot process will come to a halt and the DOS prompt will generate the message Boot sector is about to be modified, do you wish to continue? Y / N.

In principle this BIOS-based virus check is very helpful in that it catches boot sector viruses like the infamous NYB virus, and, therefore, should be enabled under normal operating conditions.

However, the same virus protection will also prevent the installation of an operating system since, necessarily, the data are written to the boot sector. Consequently the virus protection will step in and attempt to crash the new installation of the operating system (like Windows). If a new installation of Windows crashes right after the hard drive check, the virus protection is, in most cases, the culprit.



Bios Guide