Wildfire London said:
I am attempting to repair XP Professional (original disc SP1) as the OS has
become corrupt. It usually gets to 9 minutes remaining "registering
components" and then just stops. The 4 or 5 "lights" in the bottom right hand
corner of the screen continue going round but there is no evidence of HD
activity. I have left it running for several hours but nothing. Any ideas
anyone?
Hm, sounds to me like something is having a problem reading. If your CD/DVD drive light is not on as well as the HD, try popping the media out and see if that generates a message to reinsert the CD, would also check the CD to make sure there are no marks on it.
There could be corruption on the HD, if you didn't or weren't able to format the partition prior to install, throw another HD into the computer if you have one laying around (perhaps in an unused computer) and try installing on it after formatting.
If you have another computer and the space, try installing the OS on that computer in a different folder (c:\windowsxp e.g.), never hurts to have second installation to fall back on if your OS becomes corrupt as your original one did. You would be able to dual-boot into either OS once the installation was complete.
If you're able to install the OS on another drive or computer, then there's some hardware problem on the computer you're working with now. I would power it off and reseat all cards, cables and memory chips and try it again.
Good luck!
Jim
