Frozen during installation

[Don]

While installing WinXP Home as an upgrade from Win98SE, the computer froze
up. It was during the installation of devices that the installation hung
up.

When I attempted to reboot, the boot sequence only goes to the pre-boot
screen from which one should be able to enter the BIOS. The memory is
counted and the BIOS identified, at which point the process hangs up.

I am not able to enter the BIOS, nor am I able to boot from any bootable
emergency disks.

I really am stumped. Thanks in advance.

Don

 

[Guest]

Hi Don,

Try a cold boot of the system:

Turn the power off, wait 10 seconds, turn power on.
Make sure no discs are inserted in CD-ROM drive and floppy drives.


Will the system pass the BIOS screen?

The symptoms you described may very well be caused by a failed hard drive,
so try unplugging it and boot without it, see if it passes the bios screen
and dies at "operating system not found" screen. If it does, this would
almost definitely be a hard disk problem
Other option is to contact your hardware vendor, because it's sounds pretty
much like a hardware problems