XP home hangs during install (with 2 mins to go)

Jetpilot

Solid State Member
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6
Long story... sorry in advance... thanks for all help!

Have a Gateway laptop that is 2 years old. 1.8 P4, 512mb, 64mb vid. XP had been running VERY slow and explorer.exe kept encountering prolblems and restarting about every 5 minutes. Decided to try a fresh install of XP from the disc that came with it. Worked great until 2 minutes to go, then freezes. I then decided to format the c: drive and start fresh.

Heres what I've done:
1) Start from a win98se floppy boot disk.
2) From the Ramdrive D: I formated the c: drive.
3) Restarted computer with XP cd, and started a fresh install.

Results:
The install picks up at step 3 (installing windows) with 39 mins to go, it never asks for a serial number and then continues to hang during (saving settings) with 2 mins to go.

My thoughts:
Seems like the c: drive isn't blank even though I've formated it. How can I truly delete the c: drive so XP starts from scratch?

My $1400 laptop is nothing but a paperweight right now and its really pissing me off. Thanks in advance for any and all help.
 
Try booting from the XP cd and deleting all partitions (if you dont need others) then recreating it with desire size and file system. Do the full format and not Quick.

To do so:
Insert XP Cd
Restart computer
When prompted to press any key to boot from cd do it (pick a key and push, there isnt an ANY KEY :p)
It loads windows setup
Push enter to install XP on a partition
Choices for Creating, Deleting, and Installing OS should come up.
Step through deleting exisiting and then creating.
 
Ok. I started completely over again and took shots with a digicam. Heres what I got.

Wipe out the c: drive with the 98se starup floppy:
DOSformat.jpg


Boot from the XP cd and format the drive (again) in NTFS:
XPformat.jpg


Now, the format is complete... Setup restarts the computer and jumps immediately to what you see here. Never asks for any info from me. Just goes right to step 4, Installing Windows:
formatcomplete.jpg


It the reaches this point and the computer completely freezes:
frozen.jpg



Ideas?
 
What happens when you restart the computer after it freezes? Does it continue install?

If nothing else working I would recommend getting software to completely clean the drive. Ex: Wipe Drive
 
When you restart the computer, it goes right back to "39 minutes to go".

I've been trying for days now to get this thing installed. I thought formatting it would completely clean the drive. Guess not. I'll try and find "Wipe Drive".
 
well technically you only need to do 25%.. you dont have to do a full 100% to get the disk clean.. but its up to you if you want to take full caution and do the full 100%
 
How sure are you that the first 25% will wipe out all references to XP? It JUST finished 25% after about an hour and 40 minutes. I'd hate to have wasted that much time if I stop it and the install does the same thing.

I'm tempted just to let chew for the next 5:25:49 and make sure.
 
Didn't work.

Let discrubber have at it. Created a new partition. Started the XP install. and...

IT DID THE EXACT SAME THING. Started at 39 minutes to go... hangs with 2 minutes to go.

Jetpilot, proud owner of a $1400 doorstop.
 
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