Windows Xp Wont Install

[tabris]

OK let me start with system specs.

AMD ATHLON XP 1700+ 1.46 GHZ
512 MB DDR RAM PC 2100
GEFORCE MX 400 64 MB PCI <--- SUX
SOUNDBLASTER LIVE 5.1
NETWORK CARD
40 GB WESTERN DIGITAL HARD DRIV 7200 RPMS
CD ROM
CD BURNER

I formatted my hardrive, booted up comp with xp in drive, it went to a blue setup screen and instaleld stuff, then said SETUP IS STARTING WINDOWS. AND IT FREEZES. sits there at the blue screen of death. So.... I tried unplugging and pulling out all cards and accessories except the bare minimum to load a comp.

Same problem...
Help me out please if anyone knows.
Thanks
-Erik "Tabris" E.

 

[Eolis]

Do you really get the "Blue Screen Of Death", or a blue setup screen......???

 

[Eolis]

Also, doeas it freeze at the same point each time...?

 

[scsa20]

I think he means the blue setup screen...alot of people get those 2 mix up

anyways, I remember when I was installing XP Pro on my system, it kept on frozeing up too, but after 2-3 restarts, it started installing.

 

[tabris]

IT IS THE SETUP SCREEN, AND IT FREEZES THERE, and i have installed and tried about 15 times

-Tabris

ps thanks for any help

 

[Eolis]

I assume you didn't format all 15 times, so I'm going to say to do another format, low if posssible, and try again. What brand of CDROM do you have?? Do you know for sure that it's good?

Memory could be a possible problem. Was this machine running Win98 before, or is this a new build??

 

[Lonman]

What kind of motherboard do you have? A buddy of mine just went through a big issue (similar to yours) and it turned out to be an incompatibilty problem between the m/b and Geforce4 card he had. Have you had an OS successfully installed on this setup before?

 

[Taurus]

i've had something similar happen to when installing xp. after you boot from the cd, it will be at the first screen, "copying files for windows setup", i think. it won't be reading from the cdrom at this point but will constantly be accessing the harddrive... i've let it go for like half an hour and was still at it... so i reset and don't boot from the cd.. just let it go back into installation and it'll work.

 

[niabi]

actually i don't know if you guys know this (you should) it does that because you not using smartdrv i know because i installed it and waited for like 40 mins then it advanced

then the next time i installed windows XP i used smartdrv and i only waited like 5 minutes on that exact same screen.

so check that out maybe is that.

nIabI

 

[tabris]

How do you do smartdrv? Bios?

 

[Son-Of-Liberty]

i think it is your ram

i think it is your ram try taking out a few of them and give it a try if this does not work then i dont know, but i have experienced a few problems installing the software and i think you should try that.

 

[Geffy]

I think it was Bytes Back tha told me that there are issues between XP and GeForce 2 cards. Sometime XP just wont install with it. If you have another card, or can borrow one for the installaion process then switch them back once the installation is complete it should work alright.

This only seems to affect some PCs, mine was fine with a GF2 Ti

 

[Bytes Back]

It was me, dont know if this affects the geforce 4 though. But no harm in trying a different graphics card for the install.

 

[Skwowwy]

I guess XP Setup doesn't like nVIDIA cards. It did the same thing too and I have a TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro.

Ah well. A workaround is installing Windows 98/98SE and do a clean install of XP from there. No upgrade! That'll only make things worse than with clean install.

 

[KingKoz]

The problem you are getting is not the blue screen of death but just a blue setup screen that won't continue with the setup. The problem is that XP needs to have smartdrv running when you attempt installation. Get a boot floppy and copy the program smartdrv.exe to it and run that from the dos prompt A:\ (boot from the floppy) type smartdrv and hit enter. Then cd to you cd drive (with the XP cd) and type setup. Obviously someone at MS didn't think to mention this little fact.

Koz

 

[Bytes Back]

what's all this talk about smartdrv ?

If XP needed this to setup it would install it from the cd when it booted. I have set XP up maybe up to a hundrred times, never needed smartdrv yet !!!

 

[Taurus]

yeah, i've installed xp on other comps without smartdrive running and it'd go fine. just every now and then i get one where it'll stall at one point.

does smartdrv have anything to do with the hdd s.m.a.r.t. capability which can be found in some bios'es?

 

[Lonman]

Originally posted by taurus
does smartdrv have anything to do with the hdd s.m.a.r.t. capability which can be found in some bios'es?

No.

 

[MDurai]

Great answers here folks,
But I'm a bit fused (Confused),
I'm going thru the same problem,
What do I need to do?
Someone pelase help me,
Here is my system specs:

nVidia GeForce2 MX 200
AMD Duron 800MHz Processor
256MB SDRAM
SB16 Sound Card
Soyo K7VTA-Pro KT133A MotherBoard
Maxtor 40GB Hard Disk
Thats pretty much the basics

 

[Bytes Back]

Beg, steal or borrow another graphics card. Take your geforce 2 out, install windows and then swap them back.