laptop is freezing at "setup is starting windows"

[CanisEstInVia]

I have a gateway solo 2500 laptop that won't load past this point for 2000 or XP. I've tried disabling the onboard sound but that didn't help. I also flashed to the lastest bios. Any ideas on what else I should try?

 

[LiLithTecH]

Can you CRTL-ALT-DELETE when it is frozen?
If so, it is in the hardware Detection process and doesn't know what to
make of a peice(s) of hardware.

You might want to try to in the BIOS:

Disable USB support
Disable Power Management support
Disable Infrared support
Disable all Serial ports

Remove any PCMCIA cards

Also, the OS cannot be installed on a Docking Station or Port Replicator

 

[CanisEstInVia]

Thanks for the hint on the ctrl+alt+del. I can NOT press the combination, so that means its not a hardware thing? I'm really not sure what to make of this. With a pc I can switch out parts easily and troubleshoot, but this is harder.

 

[CanisEstInVia]

I finally solved the problem after many days of troubleshooting. I looked on microsoft's support base and found the answer. I had to "disable ACPI functionality" by pressing F7 when the "press F6 to install third party..."

microsoft link for future reference