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WinXP Upgrade taking way to long...

N

NOX

Diamond Member
I'm trying to install WinXP onto an existing copy of Win2k (SP4), which should be a normal upgrade. However at around the 34 minute mark of the install WinXP will go into a somewhat stand still. It takes about 8 hours for the install to get to 32 minutes. After letting it run that way for another 12 hours the install was staill at 32 minutes. It's strange but I don't believe the install has stalled. It's just way to slow.

My current install of Win2k is top notch, it has been maintained to the day. Everything is up to date including the bios and SATA drivers etc. I have tried everything I can think of. I have one drive ( C:\ ) on the primary IDE and the other ( D:\ ) on the primary SATA.

If you have any suggestions please lmk?

Thanks!
 
Is your memory good?
Ensure to use Default or Safe mem timings in the BIOS.
Also try an older gfx card if you have one (as its the gfx driver install at around this time). What build Xp is it (year) as early 2001 builds will only have 'ancient' default gfx drivers?

Remove all superfluos ancillaries (inc NIC and sound cards, usb devices etc) before starting the install (less chance of IRQ/driver/power supply probs if they arent installed).

 
I would hate to install everything again...

It's the first system in my members page (Athlon 2400+).

Everything is rock solid, no conflicts of any sort. I really wanted to do an upgrade at this time because I'm really looking at just trying XP. If it's not what I had hope for it to be then I will just Ghost back to 2k. I hear what people have said about XP compaired to 2k but I wanted to try it out for myself.

I'm really hoping to find a solution... I was even thinking of disconnecting my 2nd drive (SATA) just to see if it was the Silicon Image chip that was causing the problems.

Thanks.
 
I started the install from Windows. I selected upgrade, then it restarted and went into the install/upgrade process.
 
If your XP is a true copy/bootable your best bet is to NOT upgrade from inside of windows. Boot to the cd and upgrade from there. This is as long as it is a real deal cd or a duplicate ISO and not just the i386 put on the cd. smartdrv will load automatically then and no other programs will get in the way.
 
Yes it is a real CD.

I will try that method later on tonight. That seems to be the only choice I have.

Thanks.
 
I've got a similar problem - started an XP Pro upgrade from within Windows 2000 SP4, it ran for a while, then rebooted and went to the boot menu for Windows 2000 or XP Pro Setup, so chose the latter. Accessed the CD and HDD for a while, then ended up at the XP logo screen with the blue caterpillars, These were moving, but very slowly - like 20 seconds for one pass. Left it like that for about 8 hours but nothing changed. Tried Reset, still the same so eventually shutdown and left it to come back to another day. Question is, what should I try to do next that has the best chance of succeeding whilst preserving stuff that's alreayd on the machine?

Incidentally, probably my big mistake was not removing existing hardware, especially since one of those is a Matrox RT2000 video editing card that has always been a bit iffy when it comes to drivers etc.
 
That sounds a bit like what's going on with my system. The caterpillars that you speak of are doing exactly the same thing. They are moving but nothing happens with the upgrade... stays at 34 minutes for hours.
 
Well if you have a GHOST of a good Win2K SP4 install that you can just switch back to at any time, why not try a full fresh XP install, and first see if that works, then try XP for a while.

You can just revert back to the GHOST after.
 
Well I did the fresh install and everything went great. However I'm not about to do install all the programs again so I will not be using the fresh install for long.

I can now say that it's not my hardware which is causing the XP upgrade to stall but rather the software. I just need to find out which one.
 
I'm not sure exactly how the upgrade works but you might try turning off services and making sure all startup programs are disabled.

another option would be using a transfer program
like upgrade commander
 
Make sure you have no antivirus programs running, or even installed for that matter. They may cause certain conflicts, and can easily be re-installed afterwards.
 
I think my best option at this point would be to use something like that Upgrade Commander. I did disable the Norton's Anti-Virus program and that still didn't work. I don't want to uninstall Norton's because I may lose my user ID#, which I need for my subscription for virus and program updates.
 
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