Installation freezes for about 10 mins EVERY time

[Guest]

When I am installing or even uninstalling a program on my Dell Inspiron 9100
running XP Pro, installation just freezes for about 10 minutes and then
coninues. Depending on the size of the program I'm installing, sometimes it
can take over an hour to continue. I'm not too sure but I think it might
happen when the installer is creating a System Restore point.

The most noticably common time that it seems to be happening is after the
"Windows is preparing for installation (or whatever)" bit and before the
installation actually seems to start. During this time the InstallShield
window is only visable on the Taskbar and if I click on it, nothing happens
and nothing appears. The only thing I can find relating to it in the
Processes window is something called IDriver, which very rarely uses any CPU.

I'm really hoping that someone can help me as it's been like this for about
3 months and I cna't find anything relating to it anywhere! HELP ME

 

[Steve N.]

When I am installing or even uninstalling a program on my Dell Inspiron 9100
running XP Pro, installation just freezes for about 10 minutes and then
coninues. Depending on the size of the program I'm installing, sometimes it
can take over an hour to continue. I'm not too sure but I think it might
happen when the installer is creating a System Restore point.

The most noticably common time that it seems to be happening is after the
"Windows is preparing for installation (or whatever)" bit and before the
installation actually seems to start. During this time the InstallShield
window is only visable on the Taskbar and if I click on it, nothing happens
and nothing appears. The only thing I can find relating to it in the
Processes window is something called IDriver, which very rarely uses any CPU.

I'm really hoping that someone can help me as it's been like this for about
3 months and I cna't find anything relating to it anywhere! HELP ME

I'd do the following in this order:

Do a disk error check (Start, Run, type in
CHKDSK /F
answer Y and reboot). Right click My Computer, Manage, then check Event
Viewer, Application, Winlogon entry for disk check results, if it
reports unrecoverable errors then repeat the above but use
CHKDSK /R instead.
If that finds bad sectors your drive may be failing; backup your
important data files and test the drive with the utility from the drive
manufacturer. Be aware that such utilities can find and flag bad sectors
however some do not attempt to relocate any data contained in bad
sectors so file damage may result after flagging them bad. If system
file data is in a bad sector then you may need to do a repair install of
Windows afterwards, but I'd consider replacing the drive at that point
anyway.

Delete all *.tmp files (do a Search for *.tmp starting at the root of C:
and set the View to show hidden files).

In IE, Tools, Internet Options delete cookies and all temporary internet
files including offline content.

(Deleting *.tmp files, cookies and temporary internet files will help
speed up the following scans as there will be that many files less for
the tools to examine.)

Scan for viruses with an updated a/v program. AVG Free is good.

Scan for spyware with latest builds of and updated Ad-aware and Spybot
Search & Destroy.

Defragment the hard drive.

Steve