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Windows crashing during installation? (and other issues)

W

WannabeSQ

Member
I have a system that I have had for a year or so, and some video card issues caused it to crash shortly after boot. I decided to start fresh, with a brand new HD, which worked fine, unfortunately the brand new drive failed a day after installation (S.M.A.R.T. warned me but I figured the smart broke, as the drive was literally out of the box) Anyway, I tried to go back to the old HD, wipe it clean and reinstall. I initially had some problems getting the system to boot from CD, turned out my backup copy of XP was too scratched, the real disc solved that problem. once the initial setup of xp finished, where it would say "now starting windows" which normally goes to the main install screen, with tips and everything, it would hang, and eventually say "unmountable boot volume" I restarted, and it successfully went to the setup screen, I entered CD key, and it almost finished, then hung on the "saving settings" with ~9 mins to go.

I haven't been able to get it farther than that. I tried removing all PCI cards and my other drives and no change. It always hangs in the same place. Is this a hard drive issue? The system previously had been working flawlessly for almost a year.


My other computer, after working fine except for some video card heat issues, crashed, and upon reboot, hangs just after the mem test on "detecting IDE drives" and I can't even enter setup in the BIOS. Is this a mobo issue? or a power supply issue?

My first system is an Albatron KT600 with an Athlon XP 2700+ a gig of kinston ram, Radeon 9600, Audigy2, firewire card, outboard NIC, and a highpoint rocketraid 454 with 2 RAID5s, one with 5 200GB WDs (one spare) and another of 3 Maxtor 300s (see my other thread regarding power supply). My CD drive is a Pioneer DVR106D

My other one that hangs in the BIOS is a shuttle XPC SN41G2 with a gig of kintston ram, Radeon 9500 softmod 9700 Pro, Athlon XP 2500+ OC to 3000+ speeds with a compaq CD rom drive.

Let me know if any more info would help solve my problems.
 
On your first system, have you tried installing XP on a different hard drive ?

On your second system try clearing the cmos by using the jumper (instructions should be in manual) or by removing the battery for a minute or so.
 
Take the time to do some basic testing so you can eliminate some possibilities.

Memory - Run memtest on individual sticks of ram
HDD- Verify the drive with software from the manufactorers site.
CMOS - Like the previous post said, clear it and set to use default settings, no oc.
Clean the installation CDs

After all that.. whats left ? ...the mobo, CPU, Video card and you

Good Luck
 
Ok, my first system, it was the hard drive. Weird tho, but with my luck with hard drives (had to replace 6 so far, but I am using 13 drives in the system...)

The second one, clearing the CMOS worked, it's a bitch on my shuttle XPC, but it worked, but the second boot I got no video, swapped out the video card, and viola. Is there any other way to test a video card other than in a mobo? I will test it in my large computer (the first one) but it is a bit old, Radeon 9500 NP softmod 9700 Pro. I haven't been playing many computer games, since Halo2 came out, plus my new job. The GF4MX will do.

Thanks for the help. I just got so frustrated I wasn't thinking clearly and needed a fresh set of "eyes" if you will to get me through it.
 
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