Freezing during software installation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sean Black
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Sean Black

My main HD died a couple of days ago, so while I'm waiting for a new one
to arrive, I did a clean install of XP on my, then second, now main
drive.

So far so good. Problems start when trying to install any software. No
other hardware changes apart from now one HD instead of two. When I
first switch on the PC everything seems fine, if I try to install
anything it gets part way through and then freezes, have to switch off
and reboot.

The weird thing is, if I switch on the computer and do some other stuff
with it first, I can then install things as normal. It's almost as if it
needs to warm up first. Now I know running too hot is a problem, but too
cold?

Have tried taking one of the two memory sticks out, swapping them over
etc... Seems to be fine with either one or both, so doesn't look like a
ram problem. PSU is less than a year old and should have more than
enough power (has been running fine with two HDs before the crash).

The only other problems I've noticed recently before the HD problem,
sometimes when starting up it would boot into very low resolution with
very few colours (similar to safe mode). Switching off and on again
seemed to sort that. Also on a similar note, the desktop looked fine
apart from the taskbar, which was white (normally blue) unable to change
it back form display properties, only way to fix it was with system
restore.
 
Sean said:
My main HD died a couple of days ago, so while I'm waiting for a new
one to arrive, I did a clean install of XP on my, then second, now
main drive.

So far so good. Problems start when trying to install any software. No
other hardware changes apart from now one HD instead of two. When I
first switch on the PC everything seems fine, if I try to install
anything it gets part way through and then freezes, have to switch off
and reboot.

The weird thing is, if I switch on the computer and do some other
stuff with it first, I can then install things as normal. It's almost
as if it needs to warm up first. Now I know running too hot is a
problem, but too cold?

Have tried taking one of the two memory sticks out, swapping them over
etc... Seems to be fine with either one or both, so doesn't look like
a ram problem. PSU is less than a year old and should have more than
enough power (has been running fine with two HDs before the crash).

The only other problems I've noticed recently before the HD problem,
sometimes when starting up it would boot into very low resolution with
very few colours (similar to safe mode). Switching off and on again
seemed to sort that. Also on a similar note, the desktop looked fine
apart from the taskbar, which was white (normally blue) unable to
change it back form display properties, only way to fix it was with
system restore.
Click to expand...

The color problem is connected with your video card. It can't hurt to
swap out the power supply with a known-working one. Just because
hardware is new doesn't mean it can't fail. In fact, if hardware is
going to fail, it usually will do so fairly soon. If swapping out the
PSU and video card doesn't help, I'd look at the motherboard as the
main culprit.

Malke
 
Malke said:
The color problem is connected with your video card. It can't hurt to
swap out the power supply with a known-working one. Just because
hardware is new doesn't mean it can't fail. In fact, if hardware is
going to fail, it usually will do so fairly soon. If swapping out the
PSU and video card doesn't help, I'd look at the motherboard as the
main culprit.
Click to expand...
I did wonder if the colour problem was with the graphics card, but then
why would it only affect the taskbar? The picture I use for wallpaper
was displayed perfectly normally.Weird. The option for the XP blue or
whatever it's called was also no longer available in the Windows colour
schemes menu. A faulty video card shouldn't affect the Win menu
selections themselves should it?

A mate's going to lend me a PSU and a processor, so hopefully I'll be
able to rule those out, or not as the case may be. I'm also going to try
another power lead, as the one I'm using is usually all tangled up with
other stuff, so there may be a problem with that.

It's odd though, as 99% of the time it's perfectly stable. Just in the
first couple of minutes after booting it freezes if you try and install
something. I can run processor/graphics/power hungry games straight away
with no problem, but try and install something....
 
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