installing XP stalls with 9 min remaining

[Guest]

I have been attempting to do a clean install (XP Home) on a new hard drive on
an 866MHz system with 128MB RAM. It continually stops with just less than 9
minutes remaining ("saving settings" just started) and the screen goes blue
with no error messages. The system is non-responsive; keyboard and mouse. If
powered off and restarted the setup reverts to 39 minutes and the setup
starts over at that point.

Initially I left the hard drive with one partition (80GB) then I tried
partitioning to less than 30GB per partition. I have removed the only card, a
modem. The video and audio are both on board.

Originally the system had 98SE installed until the hard drive failed. I
replaced the drive with a new one and thought I would upgrade to XP but.....

Nothing seems to change the setup from stopping at the 9 minutes left mark.
Any ideas on what I am missing?

 

[Miss Perspicacia Tick]

I have been attempting to do a clean install (XP Home) on a new hard
drive on an 866MHz system with 128MB RAM. It continually stops with
just less than 9 minutes remaining ("saving settings" just started)
and the screen goes blue with no error messages. The system is
non-responsive; keyboard and mouse. If powered off and restarted the
setup reverts to 39 minutes and the setup starts over at that point.

Initially I left the hard drive with one partition (80GB) then I tried
partitioning to less than 30GB per partition. I have removed the only
card, a modem. The video and audio are both on board.

Originally the system had 98SE installed until the hard drive failed.
I replaced the drive with a new one and thought I would upgrade to XP
but.....

Nothing seems to change the setup from stopping at the 9 minutes left
mark. Any ideas on what I am missing?

I can't help you with the problem, but you've far too little RAM to run XP
successfully. You should double or, ideally, quadruple it.

 

[Malke]

I can't help you with the problem, but you've far too little RAM to
run XP successfully. You should double or, ideally, quadruple it.

Probably the RAM or other hardware is marginal or outright faulty. XP is
far fussier than Win9x/ME about having good hardware. Test the RAM. I
like Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org. Obviously, you have to get the
program from a working machine. You will either download the
precompiled Windows binary to make a bootable floppy or the .iso to
make a bootable cd. If you want to use the latter, you'll need to have
third-party burning software on the machine where you download the file
- XP's built-in burning capability won't do the job. In either case,
boot with the media you made. The test will run immediately. Let the
test run for an extended period of time - unless errors are seen
immediately. If you get any errors, replace the RAM.

And yes, in spite of what the minimum system requirements say, you have
too little RAM for XP; I consider 256MB the minimum. More is better.

Malke

 

[HeeroYuy]

Probably the RAM or other hardware is marginal or outright faulty. XP is
far fussier than Win9x/ME about having good hardware. Test the RAM. I
like Memtest86+ from www.memtest.org. Obviously, you have to get the
program from a working machine. You will either download the
precompiled Windows binary to make a bootable floppy or the .iso to
make a bootable cd. If you want to use the latter, you'll need to have
third-party burning software on the machine where you download the file
- XP's built-in burning capability won't do the job. In either case,
boot with the media you made. The test will run immediately. Let the
test run for an extended period of time - unless errors are seen
immediately. If you get any errors, replace the RAM.

And yes, in spite of what the minimum system requirements say, you have
too little RAM for XP; I consider 256MB the minimum. More is better.

Malke

On that note: About how long does it take to test a GB of PC3200 running at
333MHz?