M
Mike Bunker
The Computer Freezes in the "Installing Devices" Section
During a Windows XP Upgrade
Keywords: XP install Frozen / Freeze / Freezes / Stops /
Halts / Halted / Locks / Locked / Hung / Hangs
I have a problem when upgrading Windows 2000 Pro to Windows
XP Pro. During the "Installing Windows" phase, with the
progress bar just under the S in "Installing devices" and
34 minutes to go, the screen flicks off then on twice and
shortly after that the blinking buttons at the bottom of
the screen stop and I am halted with no error message, and
even the mouse cursor is frozen. This happens whether I
try to upgrade my existing Windows 2000 Pro or if I try to
install with a clean formatted C: drive. I have waited as
long as three hours to see if the installation process
would continue automatically.
At this point my options are to power off or press the
Reset button. If I power off then on or restart the PC
with the Reset button, setup tries to finish the XP
install, only to halt again at the same spot. If I boot
from the XP CD and elect to repair, I end up halted in the
same spot. In six days of full-time effort (I'm serious),
I have not been able to find a way around this problem. I
have used the PowerQuest and Microsoft knowledge bases and
online help extensively. It's a darn good thing I have
another computer to access the web to do this research or
I'd be clueless.
After freezing up during install, running Partition Magic
(PowerQuest Corp) gives me error 1516 (partition improperly
dismounted). The C: drive is indeed not mounted at the
time the computer freezes and keeps me from booting Drive
Image from the PowerQuest CD or booting from the Partition
Magic repair floppies.
If I re-install Win 2K, Setup highlights the C: partition
and tells me "There is no disk in this drive." but shows
5.6 MB free when I had tried upgrading to XP from Win 2K,
and even more on a clean install.
I have tried pre-formatting the C: drive as NTFS and FAT32
prior to install, and have also tried letting the XP
installation programs convert and format the drive. I have
tried deleting and re-creating the partition, both with
Partition Magic, and by the Setup process when
re-installing Win 2k.
Computer:
Motherboard: Soyo P4ISR with latest 2aa3 flash BIOS installed.
CPU: P4 / 1.6GHz
HDD: Western Digital 80 GB, partitioned into C: (16 GB),
d: (16 GB), and E: (all the rest).
Memory: 1GB 133 MHz.
Video: ATI all-in-wonder Radeon 8500DV, with TV tuner. I
have also tried other display adapters.
I have tried installing Win XP fresh, overwriting
everything, and got the same error. I tried reducing my
memory below 1GB, installing a less exotic display adapter
card, and physically removing all unneeded adapter cards
and still have the same thing happening.
My only recovery option, now that the HDD partition is
damaged, is to do a fresh install of Win 2K by booting from
the CD, and then restore my previous installation from a
previously saved disk image using Drive Image 6 (PowerQuest
Corp).
Before trying to upgrade to Windows XP, I used Norton
Utilities to clean up any temp files and check the drives
for errors and fix any Windows problems, and I used Windows
2k's utility to defragment all drives. But I point out
again, that even a fresh install of Windows XP on a
formatted drive (either NTFS or FAT32) consistently fails
in the same spot described.
Other possible clues:
I almost hate to include this because someone will
invariably get sidetracked, tell me it is the fault of some
other product, and let it go at that; failing to complete
the investigation of the main problem.
If I install PowerQuest's latest version 7 of Drive Image,
after re-booting it will complain periodically with the
message:
"PQVS2iSvc.exe - No Disk", "There is no disk in the drive.
Please insert a disk into drive \Device\Harddisk1\DR1".
According to their knowledge base, this probably means that
a USB flash drive is installed/connected but the media is
missing. While I have used such a flash drive in the past,
I did not have one connected when the Drive Image product
was installed.
This condition exists on a clean Windows 2000 Pro install
and on the fully loaded version of Win 2K with all of my
tools and toys installed. I have even formatted the C:
partition before installing Win 2K to try to get this to go
away. As soon as I re-boot the PC, boom, this message
window starts popping up. If I uninstall Drive Image 7 the
problem goes away. Drive Image 2000 (version 6) does not
cause any problems and I have used it extensively in
troubleshooting the Windows XP problem mentioned above.
I tried installing Drive Image 7 on my laptop instead and
it doesn't cause any problems.
This message box pops up about every minute, making the
computer almost unusable because of the constant interruptions.
During a Windows XP Upgrade
Keywords: XP install Frozen / Freeze / Freezes / Stops /
Halts / Halted / Locks / Locked / Hung / Hangs
I have a problem when upgrading Windows 2000 Pro to Windows
XP Pro. During the "Installing Windows" phase, with the
progress bar just under the S in "Installing devices" and
34 minutes to go, the screen flicks off then on twice and
shortly after that the blinking buttons at the bottom of
the screen stop and I am halted with no error message, and
even the mouse cursor is frozen. This happens whether I
try to upgrade my existing Windows 2000 Pro or if I try to
install with a clean formatted C: drive. I have waited as
long as three hours to see if the installation process
would continue automatically.
At this point my options are to power off or press the
Reset button. If I power off then on or restart the PC
with the Reset button, setup tries to finish the XP
install, only to halt again at the same spot. If I boot
from the XP CD and elect to repair, I end up halted in the
same spot. In six days of full-time effort (I'm serious),
I have not been able to find a way around this problem. I
have used the PowerQuest and Microsoft knowledge bases and
online help extensively. It's a darn good thing I have
another computer to access the web to do this research or
I'd be clueless.
After freezing up during install, running Partition Magic
(PowerQuest Corp) gives me error 1516 (partition improperly
dismounted). The C: drive is indeed not mounted at the
time the computer freezes and keeps me from booting Drive
Image from the PowerQuest CD or booting from the Partition
Magic repair floppies.
If I re-install Win 2K, Setup highlights the C: partition
and tells me "There is no disk in this drive." but shows
5.6 MB free when I had tried upgrading to XP from Win 2K,
and even more on a clean install.
I have tried pre-formatting the C: drive as NTFS and FAT32
prior to install, and have also tried letting the XP
installation programs convert and format the drive. I have
tried deleting and re-creating the partition, both with
Partition Magic, and by the Setup process when
re-installing Win 2k.
Computer:
Motherboard: Soyo P4ISR with latest 2aa3 flash BIOS installed.
CPU: P4 / 1.6GHz
HDD: Western Digital 80 GB, partitioned into C: (16 GB),
d: (16 GB), and E: (all the rest).
Memory: 1GB 133 MHz.
Video: ATI all-in-wonder Radeon 8500DV, with TV tuner. I
have also tried other display adapters.
I have tried installing Win XP fresh, overwriting
everything, and got the same error. I tried reducing my
memory below 1GB, installing a less exotic display adapter
card, and physically removing all unneeded adapter cards
and still have the same thing happening.
My only recovery option, now that the HDD partition is
damaged, is to do a fresh install of Win 2K by booting from
the CD, and then restore my previous installation from a
previously saved disk image using Drive Image 6 (PowerQuest
Corp).
Before trying to upgrade to Windows XP, I used Norton
Utilities to clean up any temp files and check the drives
for errors and fix any Windows problems, and I used Windows
2k's utility to defragment all drives. But I point out
again, that even a fresh install of Windows XP on a
formatted drive (either NTFS or FAT32) consistently fails
in the same spot described.
Other possible clues:
I almost hate to include this because someone will
invariably get sidetracked, tell me it is the fault of some
other product, and let it go at that; failing to complete
the investigation of the main problem.
If I install PowerQuest's latest version 7 of Drive Image,
after re-booting it will complain periodically with the
message:
"PQVS2iSvc.exe - No Disk", "There is no disk in the drive.
Please insert a disk into drive \Device\Harddisk1\DR1".
According to their knowledge base, this probably means that
a USB flash drive is installed/connected but the media is
missing. While I have used such a flash drive in the past,
I did not have one connected when the Drive Image product
was installed.
This condition exists on a clean Windows 2000 Pro install
and on the fully loaded version of Win 2K with all of my
tools and toys installed. I have even formatted the C:
partition before installing Win 2K to try to get this to go
away. As soon as I re-boot the PC, boom, this message
window starts popping up. If I uninstall Drive Image 7 the
problem goes away. Drive Image 2000 (version 6) does not
cause any problems and I have used it extensively in
troubleshooting the Windows XP problem mentioned above.
I tried installing Drive Image 7 on my laptop instead and
it doesn't cause any problems.
This message box pops up about every minute, making the
computer almost unusable because of the constant interruptions.