Repair Option: Stalls at Installing Devices 35 minutes left

[Guest]

Hi,

I have XP Professional on a Dell Precision 360. Yesterday as I was
downloading a file and when I returned I found the 'blue screen' of death.
STOP: C000021a {fatal system error}

When I rebooted, I got
Windows\system32\config\system not found.

I entered the recovery console and ran article: 307545 "How to recover from
a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting." I backed up
all 5 hives, reloaded the new hives from the repair subfolder and rebooted
into safe mode. The operation seemed successful but the computer kept on
rebooting on its own. I finally shut the computer off. I reloaded the
install disk and when I rebooted, the pc allowed me to perform the install
repair option which I proceeded to perform. When the startup got to the
Installing Devices portion, it stalled at 35 minutes left. The keyboard is
functional (caps lock works) and the scrolling function lights on the lower
right of the screen operates but nothing happens for several hours. I
removed all extraneous hardware and am only running with the video card, cd
rom drive, 256MB RAM and floppy drive. I also turned all devices that were
not necessary (usb, network interface, sound card) off in the BIOS. I still
have the same pause everytime I reboot. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

jonathan

 

[Guest]

BTW: I performed all steps in 815319 and 828267. What other hardware could
be causing the problem?