Help - Win2k setup hangs when "Setup is Starting Win" screen appears

[Chuck Mueller]

I am trying to rebuild a P2/400mhz PC with a scratch build
for a friend. He was badly infected with viruses so we
decided a scratch rebuild would be best. PC was running
Win2k Pro previously but had been updated from Win98, then
ME and was working fine prior to the virus incident. Board
is an ASUS P2B-DS with one Slot 1 400mhz PII and 500mb
RAM. I have stripped the system down to just the blank,
formatted, HD and CDrom drive and video card but setup
hangs every time at the "Setup is Starting Windows"
screen. Requires hard reset to restart. Have updated BIOS
to latest version, have disabled all com and lpt ports,
SCSI Ctrl, IR, power mgmt, etc in BIOS but still cant get
passed that point. Have tried multiple copies incl orig.
SP1 Win2k, SP4 copy, and even WinXP (although I dont
really want to load that) stops at the same point. I'm
really at a loss as to how to get an OS back on this
system. Any ideas would be appreciated. Please email
direct if possible. Thanks. (e-mail address removed)

 

[Kevin Huntly]

It is definitely a hardware problem, likely to be either memory or hard disk
controller. Have you tried installation with known good memory or a second
hard disk? I would try those two things first, theyre both easier than
replacing the motherboard, which could be the ultimate fix anyway.