98SE to XP Home hangs

[Dave Claxon]

I am trying to upgrade from W98SE to XP Home, and Setup copies the setup
files to the hard drive, the progress meter turns red saying "Restarting
computer," then goes to black screen with one line of text saying "Setup
is inspecting your computer hardware configuration." It just sits there
interminably, I let it go once as long as an hour to see if it would
ever do anything. I have eliminated everything Upgrade Advisor thought
might have an issue, I have disabled Legacy USB supportper KB282195, I
have uninstalled anti-virus, I have clean-booted W98 per KB310064, and
nothing works. At one time I even put in a different motherboard, which
I made sure was on the compatability list, with with sound, video and
LAN onboard so nothing else was plugged in, and got identical results as
with my own board. It is an intel D815EEA board with onboard sound and
LAN, ATI Rage 128 Pro video, PIII 800 Mhz, 256MB RAM, 80 GB WD hard
drive. It is a fairly clean install of W98, since I had just reformatted
and reinstalled a couple of weeks before deciding to move up to XP, and
haven't installed much of the applications yet. Does anyone have any ideas?
Thanks,
Dave

 

[BobDelaney]

If it were me, I'd boot from the Win XP CD, go into Recovery Console,
delete the primary partition, and just start over with a clean install of
Windows XP. Why bother with an upgrade when a clean install is always
better?

 

[Dave Claxon]

Bob,
I have considered that, and haven't yet ruled it out, but
I was under the impression that since this is an "upgrade
CD" that it looked for a copy of the qualifying OS before
it would install. But once it finds W98, setup starts
with the option of "upgrade or full install?" Would
selecting full install at this point give the same
results?
Thanks,
Dave

 

[Dave Claxon]

OK, I tried the full install option, and still got the
same results. Only now, after going back to last known
good configuration, subsequent reboots still want to
continue setup, and hang again if I dont intercept with
F8. So I'm guessing it's not a W98 to XP issue, it must
be that XP just doesn't like something about my computer,
I just can't figure out what.
Dave