Win XP Pro Final hangs on installation

[jam4brains 0]

Hi.

I wonder if anyone can help me

 

After WinXP setup has restarted for the first time, i.e. when it boots up in "DOS" mode with a screen that says

"Press F6 if you have a SCSI or third party......."

 

As soon as it gets to the message "Starting Windows Setup"

 

my PC hangs...

 

I have tried stripping the PC down to the minimum, i.e. Graphics card only card installed... to eliminate any hardware conflicts, but the problem remains...

 

any ideas any1?

 

Pc config - Abit KT7A m/board(VIA chipset), AMD Duron 800, 384Mb RAM, 15Gb HD, Geforce 2MX 200 Graphics card.

[FogEater 0]

I have the very same problem, my PC hangs when it shows "setup is starting windows".

 

My config is KT7A-Raid (Raid 0) Athlon 1.33ghz, Asus Geforce3, SoundBlaster Live, internal PCI ADSL modem (Itex chipset).

 

The above configuration works just fine on Windows Millenium but XP won't even start installation. Can anybody help?

[Brian Frank 0]

XP seems to have problems with the HPT370 in a RAID array. I've installed XP on my VP6 and it works fine without using any RAID configuration.

I would at the very least take out the SBLive! if you haven't tried it. Wouldn't hurt to have the latest BIOS either.

Reset your BIOS back to the defaults, and don't do any overclocking either.

[jam4brains 0]

thankyou every1 for your help, but I don't have the RAID version of the motherboard, just the plain vanilla KT7A.

 

 

Hmmmmmm

any more ideas?

[FogEater 0]

Quote:

Same here... but, I have a workaround!

I have to install it to a single Western Digital ATA-100 7200 rpm 2mb buffered 40gb boot disk on the 'normal/ordinary' EIDE channel one (non-RAID ones) in order to install it!
* Even IF I put in the HighPoint 370 RAID FirmWare drivers at the install F6 screen for 3rd party drivers! 2k needs that diskette, XP has support for it and STILL will not install to those RAID striped disks here... complaining about "unrecognized filesystems" on them!
(Inside 2k later, I install the Highpoint controller & RCM drivers, & in Disk Manager import any "dynamic" disks (stripes) I have setup!)

Make me understand, are you saying that in order to install XP on my machine I should move the hard drive connector to the primary IDE port, then once setup is over move it back to the Raid controller?

Can you please provide as many details as you can? I'm not very experienced in this field.

Thank you

[FatFish 0]

Quote:

thankyou every1 for your help, but I don't have the RAID version of the motherboard, just the plain vanilla KT7A.

Maybe you have enabled the antivirus in the BIOS or you have write protected the boot sector?

try disable them

[jam4brains 0]

hmmm no, its not the BIOS antivirus, it has already got past that stage, as it has modified the boot sector already, besides I hate that thing anyway! Always turn it off.

 

hehe

Anymore suggestions!???

I am eternally grateful.... hehe

[jam4brains 0]

OK. I solved it.

 

The problem was with the GeForce2MX

 

I removed the card, and replaced it with an old PCI Cirrus Logic 1Mb job.

 

WindowsXP installed fine

 

after installation had finished, I swapped the graphics cards back, Installed the detonatorXP drivers, and everything is groovy!!!

 

just thought I'd let u know as it may solve other peoples problems too....

 

cheers

[Brian Frank 0]

AlecStarr: Oh, yeah, I'm over at 2cpu all the time, under a different alias tho.

[FogEater 0]

Ok, now I'll tell you what happened. Gee, this story is driving me crazy. I disconnected EVERYTHING and left the PC with the video board and ONE hard drive connected to IDE1 only. No Raid controller, just the usual IDE port. I had nothing but the Abit KT7A-Raid (with up to date Bios 3R), the Asus Geforce3 video board, one EIDE hard drive (Quantum AS 40gb) connected to the first IDE port, a Pioneer CD-Rom, mouse and keyboard. No component was overclocked and I took my Bios settings back to default. The CD-Rom driver is proven to read that particular brand of disks and the CD works just fine on a different PC.

 

Well, believe it or not, XP didn't install even on this minimal configuration, so your workaround doesn't work for me

 

Frankly I'm desperate, I've tried every possible solution with no luck. At this point I think I should throw the XP CD-Rom away and forget about it.

[FogEater 0]

YES! YES! I did it! Now setup works just fine The solution was replacing the Geforce3 with another video board (a slow Kyro AGP in my case) and everything went ok!

 

Since the other guy experienced the very same problem with a KT7A motherboard and a Geforce card (Geforce2 in that case) I may argue that XP cannot install on a KT7A plus Geforce (either 2 or 3) based system.

 

This could be an interesting information to share as this hardware is (or is becoming) very popular. Perhaps pick up this info and put it in a FAQ or something like that.

 

Thank you very much for your help, really

[jam4brains 0]

yeah, its weird isn't it. Apparently it only happens with GeForce cards... strange seeing how Microsoft and Nvidia are almost married, with the XBox and all......

 

odd

 

 

glad to have helped some people

[FogEater 0]

A friend of mine just installed XP on a computer with Geforce3 and an Asus motherboard. In his case everything went ok. It seems the problem occurs with Geforce cards and Abit (at least the KT7A) motherboards.

 

Well, back to installing the rest of the software