"Setup is Starting Windows..."

computermod14

computermod14

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 6, 2003
Messages
327
When I go to install XP onto my older PC, after booting off CD the setup loads but just sits at the final step "Setup is Starting Windows". Specs of the PC are Athlon XP 2500, MSI motherboard, 80GB Seagate Barracuda SATA, and that should be all you need. The RAM all tested out fine, but I have 768MB. Any input is great, thanks.

Tyler
 
I assume everything is running at stock speed while installing windows? I would install windows with 1 stick of ram and see if it hangs up. Also are you using a decent power supply?
 
how long are you waiting? When I installed XP on my first sata drive Windows would take a good five or so minutes sitting at that point. (The only reason I let it sit that long was because I was doing something else and didn't feel like stopping to figure out what went wrong since it'd still be there when I was done.)
 
I've already tried just 1 stick and the settings are default. I let it sit at the screen for about 2 days, lol. I think I'm going to run a hardware diagnostic, but before I do so I'm going to try another optical drive, or hard drive. Already tried 2 different OS disks as well.
 
Yeah, my next suggestion was going to be bad media or a bad optical drive. If you're using a slipstreamed disc make sure you burn slow -- like 6x for a CDR, or 2x for a DVD-R, painful I know but it can make a difference if something is getting screwy -- and use a reliable drive for the install.
 
I just had an older Dell laptop do that to me. It was very bizarre the way it would hang with a BART PE bootable CD, and it would also hang on XP setup as yours does. It would boot to a WIN98 boot disk fine and it passed Memtest and all diags. I was at a loss.

After a lot of Googling, I found one suggestion to try a different HAL during XP setup. When you see the message to press F6 to load disk drivers, hit F5 instead. It will continue to load more files and then stop and ask you for a "Machine Type" (HAL).

I originally selected "Standard PC" and was shocked when it worked. Everything worked fine except power features. It didn't load any ACPI. So I tried again and selected "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC" and then everything worked just spiffy.

I have no idea what the problem was and why selecting a different HAL than the default worked. Note that on a dual/quad core CPU you need to pick a HAL that supports multiple processors. The "Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC" HAL is for a single core. For the OP this should not be a problem with the AXP CPU.

If you eliminate bad optical drive, bad media, and bad RAM, then give this a try.
 
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