XP Pro formatting 0% for 20 min.

[wallsfd949]

I have (now had) 2 OSes on my machine - SUsE 9.1 and WinXP. I was getting CRC (cyclic redundancy check) errors and XP was running slow / laggy while SUsE was fine. I decided to reinstall XP. I've tried to format the old partition and then tried to delete the partition, create a new one, and format it but no success.

The "Setup is formatting....." bar has/is setting at 0% for ~20 minutes. Any thoughts on what the problem is?

 

[mechBgon]

Um... got specs? 🙂

 

[wallsfd949]

Compaq Presario 1528CL
P4 2.53
512MB RAM
40GB disk (partitoned ~28GB Win - 700MB Swap - 10GB Linux)
15"LCD
CD-RW/DVD

if that helps...

 

[mechBgon]

When it's CRC errors, this is what comes to mind:
[*]Faulty Windows CD or Linux CD
[*]Optical drive is not healthy
[*]IDE cables are damaged/faulty
[*]Memory is weak or simply undervolted (possibly due to weak/dying power supply not holding voltages well)
[*]Motherboard is failing
[*]edit: I guess imminent HDD failure is another possiblity, try the top link in my signature and go down quite a ways, there are links to the different HDD manufacturers' diagnostic utilities there. Get the appropriate utility and test your hard drive with the extended test.[/list]You could try a different CD, a different optical drive, different IDE cables and different memory, and possibly run Memtest86 if the memory remains a suspect.

Bigger picture: is it under warranty? If so, make it Compaq's problem 🙂

 

[duragezic]

Could be a hosed hdd, not all that uncommon...

 

[wallsfd949]

I was able to get the partition deleted with my Gentoo system rescue CD with qtparted. XP is installing now ( <-- crosses fingers). Once XP is up and I fix lilo, I'll use your links to test the disk as I suspect it may be failing. It is a laptop so that eliminates some possible problems.

Also notable, I don't experience any problems in Linux. I tried to watch a movie in Media Player and it hung every 10 min or so.