Installation Freeze (4min left)

[A-mak]

Hey all,

I'm having some major problems with a new computer I just put together. Xp pro (slipstreamed with sp2) will not finish installing.

I have a seagate barracuda 250gb 7200.10 sata 2 16mb cache in it, and am installing Windows XP PRO SP2 (cd i made) on it.

It has paused at the Finalizing installation (4min remain) part multiple times, it will pause until I physically hold the power button (atm its been paused for about half an hour if not more)

There is nothing wrong with the cd as I used it to install xp pro sp2 on a different system the day before with no troubles (using that machine right now).. However this machine gets some.

Upon force restart if I take the disc out it will try to load the os but only a permanent blank screen will appear. I did see a BSOD in there somewhere aswell (one of the times of installing)

I have barts minipe ex2 and booted that live cd and could see no problems. The only thing I can come up with is the ram or perhaps something wrong on the mobo but I doubt it.

The mobo is a P5V-VM-DH and ram is just 1024mb stick of Generic ddr2 553mhz.

Hope someone can help.

 

[baronvongogo]

Possible causes:

1.ram faulty (sadly you only have 1 stick so you will have to lend some to test)

2.CPU overheating (check bios for temps and fan speed)

3.bad motherboard (unlikely but a possible cause)

4.hard drive (could download the hard drive manufacturers software so you can boot from cd and run diagnostics)

The blue screen during install would normally indicate some sort of hardware failure.

 

[A-mak]

Thanks, The odd thing is it could be ALL of those things.

Hard drive makes a high pitch squeel slightly (seems to load properly) will get the test software tomorrow .. Bios reports cpu as 70c degrees!! tho everest ultimate edition reports it as 60c degrees (pent d 805 and I beleive 65c is ment to be max).. Case came with plasticy things which I have presumed hold the mobo up (stupid case) would plastic under the screw hole mess anything up motherboard wise?it has a metal screw into it to hold the mobo in place..

Hope I can get it working thanks for your help mate

 

[baronvongogo]

thats a high temp but for Pentium D`s its within acceptable levels might want to turn on the warning monitor if your BIOS has one. So if it reaches say 80C your pc will start beeping.

The plastic things on your mobo are ok, normally you have brass mounts but some motherboards do come with plastic ones too. So that`ll be fine the good thing about those ones is if one is out of place it at least wont short your motherboard .

Hard drive noises are hard to pin point mine always make a racket but have not failed yet, Although iv heard many with little clicking noises which have failed so its hard to diagnose without using the software.

 

[A-mak]

Update:

I just did a SEATOOLS full scan and partition structer scan everything passed except for my windows partition which had bad file structer (seatools reccomendation was just to defrag and also said it is caused by improper shutdown possible) which makes sense since the installation of xp never finished..

So I think the hard drive is fine.

Doing memtest86+ as we speek will let you know of any troubles. Anyone got anymore ideas on what todo? I just want to get xp on it so I can get rid of the **** thing!

Edit:
I beleive I found the culprit, memtest reported 89 errors when doing 700mb+ chunks into the memory, I have switch the 1gb stick of generic ddr2 533mhz into the second slot and am doing another test.

Does this indicate that the memory is bad? or just not very compatible with my mobo? (asus p5v-vm-dh)

 

[baronvongogo]

errors indicate its bad if the other stick is fine then your pc should be ok would explain the freezing during installation and blue screen.