Help : Windows hangs on setup

V

Viscos

n00b
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Nov 10, 2005
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Hello, I'm having a big problem setting up Windows XP Pro SP2 on my new hard drive. What the set up is doing is going past the "setup is loading(random driver) then hanging up on "Setup is launching Windows". It hangs in the same place every time.

My old hard drive crashed. I had to reformat it and install Windows XP on it. I was having the same problem reinstalling Windows on my old hard drive. I also swapped out a hard drive from a friends PC and again, same problem. BUT, I was able to successfully install Windows on my old hard drive after 3 days of tinkering with it. I ran the setup like usual, and it got stuck in "setup is launching Windows", then I took the CD out, put it back in, and it continued the setup.

But now my PC is running incredibly slow. It takes a good 3 minutes for it to boot up, slower than the previous 30 seconds it took to boot. I did a disk diagnostic and it showed my old hard drive had some bad sectors and will probaly fail, so I bought a new one and can't get Windows XP SP2 to install.

I've tried all I could think of to get it to work. I've swapped out the CD Rom and the RAM. I've flashed my BIOS, I ran MEMTEST on the RAM I currently use. I've disconnect my floppy and soundcard while trying to install(I can't disconnect my video card because my mobo has no onboard video). I've taken out one stick on RAM, i've went to the Seagate website and installed the hard drive drivers on the hard drive. I really can't think of what could be causing this.

My old hard drive still works, and the computer works fine. It's running slow, but everything works. Graphics,sounds, everything. I'd like to get Windows to install on my new hard drive to eliminate thew slowdown but it's not looking promising. I will list the specs of my PC below to help single out the problem. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

CPU : AMD Athlon XP 2800+
Ram : 1GB Corsair XMS
Hard Drive : Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 Ultra ATA IDE 80GB
Sound Card : Sound Blaster Audigy
Video Card : Radeon 9700 Pro
PSU : 350W Enermax
Mother Board : Asus A7N8X(onboard sound, no onboard video)
CDRom : Plextor Plexwriter 40/12/40A CD RW
 
I would get the utility from Seagate to clear the drive completely, because you don't want that drive overlay software installed when it's not needed. Is the CD scratched that you're using?
 
No scratches on the CD, not even a smudge. CD is brand new. I tried installing Windows before I put the drivers on the hard drive, didn't work.The drivers i'm talking about are from their utility. It gave me an option "would I like to set up this hard drive to use with windows" and I picked which version of Windows and the "/w SP1 or greater" option. (this hard drive is brand new)
 
Finally a Noobie who gives us all the info we want .. The first time... ALL HAIL Viscos

Based on the consice information you've supplied the answer is ..... your screwed :D

j/k

How about a few other simple things, have you replaced the ide cable. Did memtest come back with 0 errors? Since you've had trouble with both drives to one extent or another did you try swapping Ide channels? Is the new one jumpered correctly
 
hulksterjoe said:
Finally a Noobie who gives us all the info we want .. The first time... ALL HAIL Viscos
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Indeed. Good posts draw good replies.

Based on the consice information you've supplied the answer is ..... your screwed :D
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Your such an ass. :p

Yeah, check the IDE cable. When your other drive died was it mechanical failure, IE click of death/drive making noises? Did you ever test the drive on another PC?

I'd also check the transfer mode of the IDE channel in device manager, but this sounds like a hardware issue.
 
No errors on MEMTEST. I just tried switching the IDE channels, didnt work. The only swapping of IDE cables i've done with swapping the CDRom IDE cable with the HD IDE Cable, which didn't work either. I checked what mode my channels are in. Under the primary IDE channel, it says the current transfer mode for device 0 is not applicable, for device 1 it says PIO mode, both are set to run on DMA if available. My secondary IDE channel says current transfer mode for device 0 is Ultra DMA Mode 2, device 1 is not applicable. Thanks for the help so far, and the compliments on the post :cool:

Edit : Forget to mention my new hard drives jumpers are set on Master/no slave. Also, the reason it says PIO mode under device 1 is because my old hard drive(the one i'm using right now) is set as a slave. The hard drive hasn't completely failed yet. It used to make weird noises, but ever since it crashed it hasn't been doing that. I checked the hard drive with chckdsk utility and it showed it had some bad sectors that couldn't be repaired.
 
Viscos said:
No errors on MEMTEST. I just tried switching the IDE channels, didnt work. The only swapping of IDE cables i've done with swapping the CDRom IDE cable with the HD IDE Cable, which didn't work either. I checked what mode my channels are in. Under the primary IDE channel, it says the current transfer mode for device 0 is not applicable, for device 1 it says PIO mode, both are set to run on DMA if available. My secondary IDE channel says current transfer mode for device 0 is Ultra DMA Mode 2, device 1 is not applicable. Thanks for the help so far, and the compliments on the post :cool:

Edit : Forget to mention my new hard drives jumpers are set on Master/no slave. Also, the reason it says PIO mode under device 1 is because my old hard drive(the one i'm using right now) is set as a slave. The hard drive hasn't completely failed yet. It used to make weird noises, but ever since it crashed it hasn't been doing that. I checked the hard drive with chckdsk utility and it showed it had some bad sectors that couldn't be repaired.
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You have got some nice hardware failures. Get a new hd and new cables, if that doesn't work then your motherboard may need the axe.
 
I just got a new hard drive :< The OLD hard drive has bad sectors, there's nothing wrong with the new one.
 
Viscos said:
The only swapping of IDE cables i've done with swapping the CDRom IDE cable with the HD IDE Cable, which didn't work either.
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The Cd-rom cable is usually a 40way cable and the harddrive cable is 80way pin .. this may or may not be true with yours. but the 80pin unit is the one for the hard drive and the blue end goes to the motherboard. Either way replace it with a new one.. for $2 I think you can splurge
 
Hehe ok, i'll go ahead and order a new IDE cable for my hard drive. I could use a new one anyway to take advantage of U-ATA hard drive. I'll report back if it doesn't work.
 
Try this: upon startup of the computer, keep pressing F8 until you get to a menu then select "boot into VGA mode"....see if you can install from there...I've had to do it a few times. Do this with the windows disc IN THE DRIVE, of course.
 
Never got the menu for that option. I believe you need Windows installed to get that menu. If I press F8 throughout the whole startup, the setup with launch when it says "Press any key to boot from CD".
 
Viscos said:
Update : The new cable didn't work. Setup still hangs on the same spot.
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Reinstall XP. If the data was corrupted on install, replacing the cable won't fix the corrupted data. Good luck.
 
Have you tried running the hard drive off of a different ide channel? Or maybe without the cd rom drive. I had a problem once where the cd-rom was borked and Windows 2000 would freak out and run really slow. The drive went bad and wouldn't read any cds. Swapped it out and everything was faster.

I know that you said that Memtest passed, but have you tried running Prime 95 to see if there are any errors? You could run Prime 95 outside of windows by picking up The Ultimate Boot CD.

I also had this problem with a bad burned copy of Windows, and with a bad cd-rom drive.

So I'd suggest borrowing a different cd-rom drive and trying that first, since we can assume the new Windows cd is good (hopefully).

Good luck.


 
Reinstall XP. If the data was corrupted on install, replacing the cable won't fix the corrupted data. Good luck.
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This is a new hard drive. It's never had Windows on it. I can't get Windows to install, that's the problem. I can't really unplug my CD-Rom, because then I wouldn't be able to run my Windows CD. I've also tried swapping out my CD-Rom with another one, and it still gets stuck on the same spot every time.
 
Viscos said:
This is a new hard drive. It's never had Windows on it. I can't get Windows to install, that's the problem. I can't really unplug my CD-Rom, because then I wouldn't be able to run my Windows CD. I've also tried swapping out my CD-Rom with another one, and it still gets stuck on the same spot every time.
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My bad, I thought it was hanging on the first boot.

Test your RAM with memtest86+, located on the ultimate boot CD, link in sig. Good luck.
 
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