Problems installing WinXP

[DeathByBowtie]

My friend is trying to install Windows XP on his computer. He's had it running for a few years, but somehow managed to bork his copy pretty bad, so I put his HDD in my computer, wiped it, and put it back in his. We have a copy of Windows XP Pro w/ SP2, but when we start it up, it shows the black screen with "Windows is inspecting your hardware configuration", then goes to the blue screen with "Windows Setup" at the top (where it would normally tell you everything that's getting loaded across the bottom), it just hangs. We've tried two different Windows CDs and both CD drives with the same results. He's a little rusty on the specs, but as best he can remember:

Proc: AMD Athlon XP 3000+ish
Mobo: MSI KT4AV
1gb ram
Western Digital 160gb HDD

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[SmokeRngs]

It could be a problem with bad hardware which could have been what borked the previous install. If there is any overclock make sure to put it back to stock. Also, doublecheck RAM timings and all that other stuff to make sure it's set to specifications.

Also, you may want to run memtest on the system to see if there is a problem with the RAM. you can make a disk for that with either CD or floppy and it will boot and run itself.

Check to make sure everything is clean and there are no overheating problems.

You could try pulling a stick of RAM to see if it will work then..

Another problem I've had in various instances had to do with the vid card. If you have a spare, even an old PCI one, you could try using that instead.

That's about all I can think of at the moment.

 

[dbwillis]

Why wipe the drive in another PC...try using the Xp disc to delete/recreate the partition and reformat it

 

[DeathByBowtie]

Why wipe the drive in another PC...try using the Xp disc to delete/recreate the partition and reformat it

I don't really know that much about the actual installation process, so I figured if there was something on the hard drive holding it up it would be easier to wipe it on my computer.

The original installation wasn't dead, it was just really screwed up. He had two hard drives, and each had a separate copy of Windows, but somehow he managed to get the copy he ran (on HDD2) to bounce back and forth between the two hard drives when starting up, so Windows wouldn't let him reformat either drive because they both had critical components on them. (This is what his cousin told us, at least, but his cousin knows all about these sorts of things.)

I'll have him try Memtest and pulling RAM, thanks for the idea.