Windows will not install

[Planner]

A friend of mine asked me to build a system for him. This was using an
ASUS A8N-E motherboard - 1gb Ram and 500gb SATA HD. This I built and
installed XP Pro + SP2. All ran well and handed over to him the
system.

All has been well for about 3 months and he called me up to say that
the PC would no longer boot into XP.

Knowing his internet and PC activity, this did not surprise me as he
is always downloading games and apps, so I suspected that he had
corrupted the file system or the MBR. Anyway I played around with it
but with no success so I called him to say that I would need to re-
install XP. I loaded the CD, set-up ran, ran a full NTFS format. Then
XP loads the initial files onto the PC, once it has completed that
operation it then says that you need to restart the machine and then
it goes through the set-up loop again and again.

The BIOS seems to start OK - no funny error messages. No POST errors.
The only peripheral hardware is the DVD drive and a GForce graphics
card. No PCI cards.

My only other though is a BIOS virus

Please can someone advise what maybe causing this.

Thanks in advance
John

 

[Guest]

at what point the computer reboots, r u able to enter the gui mode setup
screen?

 

[Planner]

at what point the computer reboots, r u able to enter the gui mode setup
screen?

Sorry - What do you mean by "at what point the computer reboots, r u
able to enter the gui mode setup
screen?"
All that happens is it loads the initial set-up files (Windows set-up
with blue background) then reboots and repeats the whole process

 

[Daave]

I loaded the CD, set-up ran, ran a full NTFS format. Then
XP loads the initial files onto the PC, once it has completed that
operation it then says that you need to restart the machine and then
it goes through the set-up loop again and again.

I wonder if you are booting off the CD.

When Setup is done copying files and your PC reboots, you should see
this message:

"Press any Key to Reboot"

Make sure *not* to press any key! Otherwise it will boot off the CD
again rather than the hard drive.

See:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

 

[Unknown]

Try disconnecting all external devices. Leave mouse and monitor only
connected. Then install.

 

[Planner]

Try disconnecting all external devices. Leave mouse and monitor only

Dear all

Sorted it --

I had to delete the old C partition because the Bios will only
recognise the first 131gb and I had previously set it to 250gb on the
previous rebuild.

Thanks to you all for supporting me