OS reinstall is hung

[Terry]

I did a destructive reinstall of my XP OS on my HP PC. Upon booting, it
gave me a c000021a error. So I did another reinstall. Same thing. Then I
tried a non-destructive restore. Now it hangs with "launching factory
patch" after asking for disk 2 of the system recovery CDs.

This last time I tried the restore, I sat at the PC and saw it was restoring
program files. I thought they would have been deleted during the original
formating restore. I really wanted to start from scratch since the PC was
sick. Maybe these were the original programs that came with the PC and were
reinstalled during the original reinstall.

The only thing different from when I bought the PC is I added more memory
and a second HDD for data.

Any suggestions?

Terry

 

[Andrew E.]

With pc power off,remove the hd that you added till xp is running.As for
hp restore cds,they are all non-microsoft products.Youre best bet would
be to select the option of "formatting the hd",then let it reinstall xp.

 

[Leroy]

Disconnect your second hard drive and then try again. The HP recovery
procedure only works properly with the original HP hardware
configuration, except for the additional RAM upgrade.

 

[Peter Foldes]

Terry

One or both of these will apply in your case

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=318666&sd=RMVP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=316503&sd=RMVP


Also see the following
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/library/bb457123.aspx

 

[Terry]

One of those DUH moments. I got the word (from India) that my HP PC needed
to be back in its original configuration. So I disconected the second HDD.
Finally got a good install. Then trying to reload the 2nd HDD I continued
to have problems. So I dismanteled the PC and found that I had reformated
my DATA drive (fortunately, I have an external backup). So currently I'm in
the middle of swapping all the settings for the original drive, reformating,
and then changing pin settings so I can reinstall (and reformat) my data
drive. I think this is going to work. My next challenge is reinstalling
the extra memory. But that is another hi-ball!

Thanks for your support.