T
Thomas M.
XP Pro with SP2
Sorry about the length of this post. I simply wanted to provide as much
background information on the problem as possible.
I've recently been fighting a problem on my Mom's computer. The machine
periodically freezes (There is no blue screen at this point). Sometimes it
will run a couple of hours and other times it will run only 10 or 15 minutes
before freezing. When it freezes the only option is to power off and
restart. On the restart the machine will run Chkdsk, which it sometimes is
unable to complete. It behaves this way with Safe Mode as well. I was able
to take a look at the event log and saw a bunch of hard disk errors, one of
which indicated that the driver is reporting an imminent hard drive failure,
which I can believe given the behavior of the machine.
I ordered a new 500 GB hard drive, but since my Mom's machine uses SATA and
my machine used IDE, the only way I had to initialize and format the drive
was to install it as a secondary drive in the problem machine. I was able
to initialize and format the drive. I then inserted an XP SP2 installation
CD and attempted to install XP to the new drive. The initial steps of the
setup program ran, but before it got to the part where you select the volume
on which to install XP, the setup program blue screened. I was not able to
get the new hard drive to be recognized by the machine after that happened.
So I thought that maybe the problem was a memory chip, drive controller, or
even the motherboard in the problem machine. To eliminate those
possibilities I purchased an external drive enclosure that would allow my
machine with IDE drives to use a SATA drive via a USB cable. But the new
hard drive was not recognized in the drive enclosure either. Thinking that
maybe I just had some bad luck and got a defective drive, I took the drive
back to the store and exchanged it for another drive.
I then hooked up the new drive to my machine using the drive enclosure.
Again, I initialized and formatted the drive. I then attempted to install
XP SP2--using a different CD this time--and again the setup program blue
screened. So, with an entirely different machine, different hard drive, and
different installation CD, I got the same result--a blue screen during
installation.
Now I am wondering if I am hitting a bug in the XP installation process.
Maybe it doesn't like installing to a secondary drive, or to a USB drive, or
maybe it doesn't like hard drive partitions larger than a certain size or
something. At this point, my only option is to install the blank hard drive
into the problem machine as the only drive and try installing again. I did
not do that initially because the problem had not been diagnosed for certain
and I wanted to eliminate the possibility of memory chip, drive controller,
and circuit board problems, but I don't see where I have any choice now.
Can anyone explain why the setup program would blue screen in two different
machine machines using different hard drives and installation CDs?
--Tom
Sorry about the length of this post. I simply wanted to provide as much
background information on the problem as possible.
I've recently been fighting a problem on my Mom's computer. The machine
periodically freezes (There is no blue screen at this point). Sometimes it
will run a couple of hours and other times it will run only 10 or 15 minutes
before freezing. When it freezes the only option is to power off and
restart. On the restart the machine will run Chkdsk, which it sometimes is
unable to complete. It behaves this way with Safe Mode as well. I was able
to take a look at the event log and saw a bunch of hard disk errors, one of
which indicated that the driver is reporting an imminent hard drive failure,
which I can believe given the behavior of the machine.
I ordered a new 500 GB hard drive, but since my Mom's machine uses SATA and
my machine used IDE, the only way I had to initialize and format the drive
was to install it as a secondary drive in the problem machine. I was able
to initialize and format the drive. I then inserted an XP SP2 installation
CD and attempted to install XP to the new drive. The initial steps of the
setup program ran, but before it got to the part where you select the volume
on which to install XP, the setup program blue screened. I was not able to
get the new hard drive to be recognized by the machine after that happened.
So I thought that maybe the problem was a memory chip, drive controller, or
even the motherboard in the problem machine. To eliminate those
possibilities I purchased an external drive enclosure that would allow my
machine with IDE drives to use a SATA drive via a USB cable. But the new
hard drive was not recognized in the drive enclosure either. Thinking that
maybe I just had some bad luck and got a defective drive, I took the drive
back to the store and exchanged it for another drive.
I then hooked up the new drive to my machine using the drive enclosure.
Again, I initialized and formatted the drive. I then attempted to install
XP SP2--using a different CD this time--and again the setup program blue
screened. So, with an entirely different machine, different hard drive, and
different installation CD, I got the same result--a blue screen during
installation.
Now I am wondering if I am hitting a bug in the XP installation process.
Maybe it doesn't like installing to a secondary drive, or to a USB drive, or
maybe it doesn't like hard drive partitions larger than a certain size or
something. At this point, my only option is to install the blank hard drive
into the problem machine as the only drive and try installing again. I did
not do that initially because the problem had not been diagnosed for certain
and I wanted to eliminate the possibility of memory chip, drive controller,
and circuit board problems, but I don't see where I have any choice now.
Can anyone explain why the setup program would blue screen in two different
machine machines using different hard drives and installation CDs?
--Tom