W
Wayne Deleersnyder
Hi,
I'm hoping someone can help us with this problem installing (actually
reinstalling kind of) Windows XP on an IBM Aptiva 2171-55U.
For about a year or a year and a half my friend had been running Windows XP
on his Aptiva 2171. It originally came with Windows 98SE until he upgraded
it to Windows XP though. If you check out the system specs. on his machine
it was originally as follows:
Pentium III 500MHz (512KB), 96MB, 13GB HDD IDE, PCI/ISA Microtower (3X4),
NumberNine S3 Savage4, 6X DVD, 56K, Win98SE
Yes... 96Meg. It wasn't fast as a result, but he liked the interface and
he found it easier to work with. But still... it worked. At least for the
1 to 1 1/2 years that he had WinXP running on it. Anyways, as many of us
know with the recent black-out there's been a number of power surges and as
best as we can determine after talking to the people at the local computer
store, it fried the hard drive. So, we purchased a 40Gig hard drive and got
some more memory for the computer. Right now it's only got 128Meg of Ram
but another stick of 128 Meg is on order to push it up to 256Meg (I guess
these Aptivas are really particular about the type of memory they use and
the computer maxs out at 256Meg).
But as of today the system specs. are:
P3 500
128Meg PC100 SDRAM (another 128Meg on the way)
40 Gig Western Digital drive with an 8Meg buffer
S3 Savage 4 Meg video card
6x DVD drive (I think it's made by Hitachi but it's the same one that came
with the computer)
52x24x52x LG burner (you know the story, when you start adding things, you
don't want to stop)
56K modem (I think it's a Conexant IBM modem)
NC100 Network Everywhere network card
Anyways, at first things seemed to be going smoothly. He brought his
computer and disks over to my house so that I could help him format the disk
and install WinXP Pro. Things seemed to be running smoothly, so he brought
it back home to finish setting it up; connecting it to the internet and
installing the rest of the software that he had. Then he started getting
file errors with WinXP so he reinstalled it and all shit pretty much broke
loose and eventually the system wouldn't even boot. He tried reinstalling
it around 6 times!!! Still didn't work.
So he brought it back to my house and we tried reinstalling WinXP from
scratch. Wiped the partition and started installing. Everything seemed to
be going fine until we'd run into messages during the install process saying
the drivers that we were trying to install were not signed and didn't meet
WHQL standards (didn't receive these messages the first time). So we'd try
them with the drivers... didn't work. Crashed during the install process...
Started over again... wiped the drive... got similar messages (not always
the same ones) tried it without installing the drivers... didn't work...
crashed during the install process... Started again... wiped drive...
etc... (I even tried using my WinXP disk just in case his was bad and I
used a different CD rom just in case that might have been the problem) tried
modifying the BIOS, didn't work. Pulled the network card and modem only
leaving the video card... didn't work. Every so often things seemed to be
going fine and then we'd get a blue screen with some error and the install
process would crash. Eventually we used the original recovery disk and
reinstalled Win98SE.... Worked!!!
Tried upgrading to WinXP Pro... didn't work... same problems. It would
crash during the install.
So for now we've got Win98SE running on his system (after another reinstall)
with its' usual bugs and a WinXP Pro disk we'd REALLY like to use. I've got
a couple of ideas of what to try next but...
Any suggestions or anyone run into this problem before?
Thanks,
Wayne D.
PS - sorry for making this one a long one.... just figured I'd try to give
as many details as possible
I'm hoping someone can help us with this problem installing (actually
reinstalling kind of) Windows XP on an IBM Aptiva 2171-55U.
For about a year or a year and a half my friend had been running Windows XP
on his Aptiva 2171. It originally came with Windows 98SE until he upgraded
it to Windows XP though. If you check out the system specs. on his machine
it was originally as follows:
Pentium III 500MHz (512KB), 96MB, 13GB HDD IDE, PCI/ISA Microtower (3X4),
NumberNine S3 Savage4, 6X DVD, 56K, Win98SE
Yes... 96Meg. It wasn't fast as a result, but he liked the interface and
he found it easier to work with. But still... it worked. At least for the
1 to 1 1/2 years that he had WinXP running on it. Anyways, as many of us
know with the recent black-out there's been a number of power surges and as
best as we can determine after talking to the people at the local computer
store, it fried the hard drive. So, we purchased a 40Gig hard drive and got
some more memory for the computer. Right now it's only got 128Meg of Ram
but another stick of 128 Meg is on order to push it up to 256Meg (I guess
these Aptivas are really particular about the type of memory they use and
the computer maxs out at 256Meg).
But as of today the system specs. are:
P3 500
128Meg PC100 SDRAM (another 128Meg on the way)
40 Gig Western Digital drive with an 8Meg buffer
S3 Savage 4 Meg video card
6x DVD drive (I think it's made by Hitachi but it's the same one that came
with the computer)
52x24x52x LG burner (you know the story, when you start adding things, you
don't want to stop)
56K modem (I think it's a Conexant IBM modem)
NC100 Network Everywhere network card
Anyways, at first things seemed to be going smoothly. He brought his
computer and disks over to my house so that I could help him format the disk
and install WinXP Pro. Things seemed to be running smoothly, so he brought
it back home to finish setting it up; connecting it to the internet and
installing the rest of the software that he had. Then he started getting
file errors with WinXP so he reinstalled it and all shit pretty much broke
loose and eventually the system wouldn't even boot. He tried reinstalling
it around 6 times!!! Still didn't work.
So he brought it back to my house and we tried reinstalling WinXP from
scratch. Wiped the partition and started installing. Everything seemed to
be going fine until we'd run into messages during the install process saying
the drivers that we were trying to install were not signed and didn't meet
WHQL standards (didn't receive these messages the first time). So we'd try
them with the drivers... didn't work. Crashed during the install process...
Started over again... wiped the drive... got similar messages (not always
the same ones) tried it without installing the drivers... didn't work...
crashed during the install process... Started again... wiped drive...
etc... (I even tried using my WinXP disk just in case his was bad and I
used a different CD rom just in case that might have been the problem) tried
modifying the BIOS, didn't work. Pulled the network card and modem only
leaving the video card... didn't work. Every so often things seemed to be
going fine and then we'd get a blue screen with some error and the install
process would crash. Eventually we used the original recovery disk and
reinstalled Win98SE.... Worked!!!
Tried upgrading to WinXP Pro... didn't work... same problems. It would
crash during the install.
So for now we've got Win98SE running on his system (after another reinstall)
with its' usual bugs and a WinXP Pro disk we'd REALLY like to use. I've got
a couple of ideas of what to try next but...
Any suggestions or anyone run into this problem before?
Thanks,
Wayne D.
PS - sorry for making this one a long one.... just figured I'd try to give
as many details as possible