Blank screen during install

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

There seems to be alot of this going around, but nothing seems to help me.
I am reinstalling windows XP on a Dell Dimension 8200. I've done this at
least 5 times or more in the past and have never had this problem.

Basically as soon as I boot from the CD, I recieve the message that Windows
is inspecting the Hardware, and then the screen goes like it is about to load
the first screen of the install process, but it never loads. It just sits
there. The CDROM stops spinning and there is no activity ont he harddrive.
I have tried multiple video cards, multiple CDROMs and multiple Harddrives.
I have even tested the disc on a seperate system and it boots fine.

I'm at a loss here guys. Any help would be much appreciated.
 
Koron said:
There seems to be alot of this going around, but nothing seems to help
me.
I am reinstalling windows XP on a Dell Dimension 8200. I've done this
at least 5 times or more in the past and have never had this problem.

Basically as soon as I boot from the CD, I recieve the message that
Windows is inspecting the Hardware, and then the screen goes like it
is about to load
the first screen of the install process, but it never loads. It just
sits
there. The CDROM stops spinning and there is no activity ont he
harddrive. I have tried multiple video cards, multiple CDROMs and
multiple Harddrives. I have even tested the disc on a seperate system
and it boots fine.

I'm at a loss here guys. Any help would be much appreciated.
Click to expand...

Sounds like hardware failure. Run Dell Diagnostics, either from the Dell
Resource CD or from the diagnostic partition. If the machine is under
warranty, call Dell tech support.

Here are some general hardware troubleshooting steps:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Troubleshooting

Malke
 
Unfortunatly, the reason I am doing the reinstall is that there are multiple
viruses on the PC and I can't take the chance of infecting other systems on
the network. So going to the website is out of order and it wouldn't do much
good anyways since the system is over 5 years old.

Update though: I decided to see if I could reinstall by booting into
windows and running the setup from the disc there. I was able to load the
install and rebooted to see that nice little blue screen asking me where to
install it. The only problem is I cannot delete the partitions since it has
files needed on it. I am going to attempt to find an old floppy bootdisk and
then fdisk and reformat it that way. Maybe if I can copy the install disc
over to the HDD, I will have much better luck.

Now where did I put that bootdisk...
 
Koron said:
Unfortunatly, the reason I am doing the reinstall is that there are
multiple viruses on the PC and I can't take the chance of infecting
other systems on
the network. So going to the website is out of order and it wouldn't
do much good anyways since the system is over 5 years old.

Update though: I decided to see if I could reinstall by booting into
windows and running the setup from the disc there. I was able to load
the install and rebooted to see that nice little blue screen asking me
where to
install it. The only problem is I cannot delete the partitions since
it has
files needed on it. I am going to attempt to find an old floppy
bootdisk and
then fdisk and reformat it that way. Maybe if I can copy the install
disc over to the HDD, I will have much better luck.
Click to expand...

That's fine - you don't run the Dell Diagnostics on a network anyway.
Since the machine is old, I would definitely do hardware testing. Start
with the power supply.

Malke
 
Everything checked out ok. Never had this happen before, but luckily I was
able to find some old floppies and create the windows XP bootable discs.
Thankfully it seems to be working and loading the install run. I'll let ya
know what happens.
 
=?Utf-8?B?S29yb24=?= said:
Basically as soon as I boot from the CD, I recieve the message that Windows
is inspecting the Hardware, and then the screen goes like it is about to load
the first screen of the install process, but it never loads. It just sits
Click to expand...

Have you pulled out all USB devices and turned off all printers and
external devices?
 
Back
Top