XP Reinstall Slow

[Guest]

I posted a few days ago and had some helpful tips but I am still in the same
boat. Let me recap what I am doing and what is happening to see if anyone
else can offer some advice.

I have a P4 1.3 GHz machine that originally had 128 Mb of Ram. I upgraded
the ram to 512MB and added an additional harddrive. I turned the machine on
and everything was fine. I wanted to do a fresh install because the owner of
the computer and his wife had stuff really messed up program wise.

I installed a brand new full version of Windows XP Home addition (Not the
upgrade). I formated his drives using the XP startup disk and every thing
looked normal. When XP startes to copy over the needed files to install on
the harddrive it seems to take a long time. Then when it gets to the screen
with the green dots that normally says Estimated time 39 mins it sits there
for ever. I let it run to see how long it would take and in 24 hours it
still wasn't completed.

I have put the old memory back in (same thing happens), I took the new
harddrive out (same thing happens) and I changed out the CD-ROM like was
suggested the other day with no improvement. I even tried different XP disks
with the same result.

Are there any DOS software that can do a diagnostic? I have done a ton of
computer upgrades and reinstalls but I have never seen this before.

 

[Guest]

Hi tommy,

I once experienced the same issue you are having in regards to the install
hanging at 39 minutes. My problem was due to bad RAM. I replaced my memory
and the issue was solved. Microsoft has a memory diagnostic tool that you
can use to test your RAM. http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp