A challenge for the pros! "Can't enter setup from the XP CD"

[Guest]

I have visited all the different troubleshooting and help sites, and none
adress this particular problem. So if somebody can help me i would be very
gratefull.

I am trying to re-install Xp on my computer with the XP-pro CD.
When I boot with the CD, i get to the part where setup installs the
different drivers and says "Setup is starting Windows" and then the CDrom
stops spinning and nothing happens. I cannot acces the setup welcome page.

I've already tried using the 6 boot diskettes and setup freezes at the same
spot.
I've formated my hardrive with partition magic and it still does the same
thing.
The reason I'm doing all this is because I wanted to undo partitions on my
C: drive, the active partition where XP was installed was to small and kept
running out of disk space. So before I started all this, everything ran
smoothly.

If I don't get and answer soon, I going straight to the nut house.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

To expand/change/move partitions, you could use a utility like Partition
Magic.

You now may have to access the BIOS set up and change the drive booting
sequence so that the CD drive is before the primary hard drive.

 

[Guest]

I have visited all the different troubleshooting and help sites, and none
adress this particular problem. So if somebody can help me i would be very
gratefull.

I am trying to re-install Xp on my computer with the XP-pro CD.
When I boot with the CD, i get to the part where setup installs the
different drivers and says "Setup is starting Windows" and then the CDrom
stops spinning and nothing happens. I cannot acces the setup welcome page.

I've already tried using the 6 boot diskettes and setup freezes at the same
spot.
I've formated my hardrive with partition magic and it still does the same
thing.
The reason I'm doing all this is because I wanted to undo partitions on my
C: drive, the active partition where XP was installed was to small and kept
running out of disk space. So before I started all this, everything ran
smoothly.

If I don't get and answer soon, I going straight to the nut house.

Start with the CD and make sure it's clean and doesn't have a scratch. Did
Partition Magic format for you or are you asking XP to do it?

 

[Guest]

Hi Yves,

thanks for your help,

The computer already boots from the CD, the BIOS booting sequence is floppy,
CDROM and last is primary hard drive.
My problem is that the setup freezes just before entering the "welcome to
setup" page.
I did use partition magic to merge the partitions, but wanted to do a clean
install.
Anyway with my drive formated I still can't enter setup to reinstall XP.

if you have any other ideas, please inform me.

Marc

 

[Guest]

Hi Roger thanks for your help,

Inside XP, the cd worked fine, I could browse through it without problems.
There doesn't seem to be any physical damage to the CD.
I also tried a clean install starting with the CD inside XP with the same
results. All the files where copied, the computer booted to enter setup, I
saw the question that said "press F6 to install RAID or third party drive"
and when all the files are loaded everything stops. (blue screen with grey
line at the bottom).

If you need more info please ask.

Marc

 

[Steve N.]

Hi Roger thanks for your help,

Inside XP, the cd worked fine, I could browse through it without problems.
There doesn't seem to be any physical damage to the CD.
I also tried a clean install starting with the CD inside XP with the same
results. All the files where copied, the computer booted to enter setup, I
saw the question that said "press F6 to install RAID or third party drive"
and when all the files are loaded everything stops. (blue screen with grey
line at the bottom).

If you need more info please ask.

Marc

Could be a RAM problem or a hard drive error. I'd test RAM using
Memtest86 (www.memtest86.com) and test the drive with the manufacturer's
utilities. If no errors I'd then do a zero-fill of the drive with the
manufacturer's utilities since your wiping it out anyhow and it may be
that some goofy thing left behind on the drive from PM. Zero-fill will
erase everything off the drive and it'd be just like out of the box again.

Steve

 

[Allen M]

What happens if you were to insert this CD into a different PC and sort of
go through the motions without installing XP. See if it can get past the
point to where it fails on your PC. If it does then you may have a bad hard
drive.

 

[Guest]

I've tried that this morning on my Office computer and the CD works fine.
I've also used zapdisk on my drive and then fdisk and format. I then used
scandisk and did a surface scan of the drive and nothing came up.

well that's where i'm at, thanks for your help, if you have other ideas, I
would be happy to try them.

Marc

 

[Guest]

I've used zapdisk on my drive and then fdisk and format. I then used scandisk
and did a surface scan of the drive and nothing came up.
Does zapdisk do the same thing then a zero-fill?

I came up on another problem that might be linked to this one: I was trying
to acces the XP cd through the DOSprompt to try to acces setup that way. When
I boot with a W98 boot disk, I'm not able to acces my CDrom drive. I have a
DVDrom and and CDR setup respectively as secondary master and slave. Maybe
something wrong with the CDROM that prevents me from entering setup.

Well I'll try the memory test and the zero-fill, nothing to lose anyway.

thanks for your help and if you have any other ideas I'll be happy to try
them.

Marc

 

[Allen M]

Well going with the process of elimination I'm voting that it has to be your
CD player..

 

[Steve N.]

I've used zapdisk on my drive and then fdisk and format. I then used scandisk
and did a surface scan of the drive and nothing came up.
Does zapdisk do the same thing then a zero-fill?

Dunno, could be.

I came up on another problem that might be linked to this one: I was trying
to acces the XP cd through the DOSprompt to try to acces setup that way.

Nice try but that wouldn't work anyhow. XP setup can't be run from DOS.

When
I boot with a W98 boot disk, I'm not able to acces my CDrom drive. I have a
DVDrom and and CDR setup respectively as secondary master and slave. Maybe
something wrong with the CDROM that prevents me from entering setup.

Ah, the smoke clears a bit... check drive cabling and jumpering, then
try sub'ing the CDROM drive with known good'n. Also might try pulling
the DVDROM out of the mix for the install in case it's part of the
problem. You can add it back later.

Well I'll try the memory test and the zero-fill, nothing to lose anyway.

thanks for your help and if you have any other ideas I'll be happy to try
them.

Marc

You're welcome, good luck and keep us informed.

Steve

 

[Guest]

Well Hi there, back from the weekend, and my prblem is still not solved.
I tried the fallowing things:
-removed any unnecessary hardware (sound card, ethernet card)
-tried the xp cd with only my CDWR and then only with my DVDrom, result is
the same, computer freezes at the same place as mentionned before. And in
both cases, I coudn't access the XPcd through dos prompt with the W98 bootup
disk.
-Installed my new hardrive as master, same results.
-Tried a friends CDrom, same results
-installed my hardrive on my friends computer, installed XPpro, put the
hardrive back in my computer, when we booted, we couldn't enter windows. The
computer reboots on its own.
-we tried flashing the bios again, no change.

well there it is.

Marc

 

[Richard Urban]

It could also be the CPU itself that is defective. I had a similar problem
about 3 years ago. I couldn't load any operating system on a new computer I
was putting together. If I disabled the L2 cache on the processor (from
within the bios) the install worked, but took 5 hours to complete.

I got a replacement CPU from the manufacturer and everything was fine
(install time was about 35 minutes).

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!