New PC no O/S INSTALLS

[Sheepykins]

ok i just upgraded my PC finally. nothing too fantastic by any measure but better than my old.

i slapped it in the case everythings working and bios sees everything how it should, i boot from the windows xp pro SP1 CD and it goes through and installs the setup files to the disk and then restarts, then nothing happens. at all, it hands with just an underscore/hypon on the screen.

i'm using a linux emulated OS at the mo from a CD, in safe graphics mode cause the proper emulation wont run either. ive looked in linux and all the setup files for windows have succesfully been copied onto the disk.

ive reset the bios and nothing strikes me as odd. any ideas would be gratefully recieved. (thank god the ubuntu emulator runs firefox)

 

[Nitestick]

just to clarify: you are saying it hangs after the text mode part of the install where you format, accept the license agreement etc? not after running through the whole install?

personally i' ve had problems like this with bad discs.

 

[sPlAtOiD]

Yes I have also had this problem. And sometimes it is caused from improper drive setup like your master/Slave setup. What did you upgrade? Try to change the setting in BIOS to not halt on errors.

 

[Sheepykins]

hehe yes, you were spot on it was something to do with the drive, the master boot record was either non-existant or corrupt. i basically zero filled it from a utilities disk i had. dont know why i didnt think of it before thanks guys, although i do have a new problem.

Windows is installed and all is fine, even got linux running. except Windows everytime i install something like SP2 or an ethernet driver for my mainboard then some registry errors keep popping up, seemingly random depending on what i installed.

i figured it was my windows XP cd i installed with and im using a friends today so i hope it is, any ideas if it doesnt work?

i couldnt tell you the random errors suffice to say sometimes i couldnt use anything that worked before like IE and sometimes couldnt get into windows