WinXP Pro Freezes on Install when formatting drive - Urgent help needed!

[IdahoB]

Hi there,

I just persuaded my boss to let me upgrade my crappy old work PC from Win2K to XP Pro. I backed up everything I needed to, then ran the setup disk (fully legal XP Pro upgrade edition).

I deleted the existing partition fine, then created a new one and ran a quick NTFS format on it. Except it froze at 20%.

I tried again, using the full format. This time it never made it to 1%.

System is an old AMD Thunderbird 1Ghz on a Biostar KT133 motherboard (M7VKB Ver 1.0) with the latest BIOS.

The BIOS is setup correctly, the drive is detected fine and everything was running smoothly if a bit slow under Win2K (which I now wish to God I hadn't removed).

I need to get the system up and running again but am out of ideas.

 

[robisc]

Is the CD good, meaning no scratches?

 

[IdahoB]

Yes, CD is fine. Brand new out of the box. I've actually tried using another one anyway - same problem.

 

[robisc]

Maybe try a floppy disk and format the drive with it, and then see if you can do an install of XP without a format and see if that works, also make sure all the peripheals are unplugged if you haven't done so already.

 

[IdahoB]

Needs to be an NTFS format, so a DOS floppy would be no good.

 

[Injury]

Hard drive may be dying. Hence one reason it was running slow.

 

[robisc]

Needs to be an NTFS format, so a DOS floppy would be no good.

Not talking about a DOS floppy, there are other disk utils that will do an NTFS format