Hello all.

Yet more computer troubles. I can't install Windows XP on my laptop. When Windows xp is running and the disk is inserted, the blue window comes up but when you click 'install windows xp', the window freezes for some time and then unfreezes but nothing changes.

I have tried just booting with the cd in the drive and when it prompts you to press any key to boot from the cd, i press the key and then after some whirring, the computer freezes. I have tried the cd on a different computer and its working fine.

any help is appreciated. just about ready to put foot through laptop.

That's very odd.
Hmmm.... what model laptop is it?


Quick diagnostic question: whenever you try to boot from CD (the method when you reboot your laptop, set the CD as the first boot device in BIOS, and "press any key to boot from CD" when prompted) does it get to different stages of the blue startup screen before crashing? ------ what I mean is- if you booted it 10 times in a row, does it always freeze at the exact same spot, or does it freeze at different times?

It never goes to the blue screen. It just has the prompt and the little animation of dots after the prompt. After 5 dots, I guess the computer simply continues loading Windows.

When I do press a key, the animation stops, I hear a lot of whirring, and then nothing. When I try to press a key afterwards, all I hear is a system beep.

So you power on the computer,
it says "press any key to boot from CD,
you press any key,
the message pops up that says "setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration"
it whirrs for a second--then it freezes after three or four periods show up next to the word "configuration"


what model laptop is it?
do you know if the laptop has any BIOS features that could possibly disable the windows install routine?

No. No message about seup inspecting my computer's configuration. It freezes at the "press any key to boot from cd" prompt as soon as i press a key. this is a brand new cd-r ive copied windows onto.

its an hp pavilion zx5000

i dont know of any bios features that would do that. i doubt it. the boot order checks the cd drive before the hard drive, as expected.

did you finalize the disc?

a good way to check is to right click the drive with the cd in it and select properties.
look for disc free space. it should be zero
if it isn't the disc isn't finalized.

The disc was finalized. Like I said, it works on a different computer but not on the laptop. I'm going to try to burn again at a lower speed. If this doesn't work..

Nope. Still no luck. fuck.

is the disc a oem restore disc? restore discs only work for the computers they are sold with.

have you ever booted from the cdrom drive before?

does your laptop have a floppy drive?

laptop does not have a floppy drive. the disk is a generic win xp disk. i havent booted from the cdrom drive before but i doubt thats the problem. the disk isnt even functioning properly when i run it on windows xp. 'install windows xp' just freezes the window for some time and then does nothing. 'learn more about the setup process' loads the htm file as it should. 'check my system automatically' for compatibility also freezes the window for some time.

is there a system restore partition on you HDD? on my XP machine i have to delete the restore partition so i can do a fresh instal from my cd otherwise the restore comes from the partition.

om might be correct, you might not have your BIOS configured properly.

here is something to try,
create another disc with the following files
they will be in the root of your c: drive
NTLDR
NTDETECT.COM
BOOT.INI

after you create the disc see if it will boot your machine.

Ok I think I got a result which might maybe illumine the problem a bit. After uninstalling a ton of crap and restarting over and over again, I got the 'setup is inspecting your computers configuration' prompt. but then the screen goes blank (black) and the computer freezes.

my own thoughts from the way the cd drive is whirring away is that its somehow having trouble reading the cd. this really doesnt make sense since it can read other parts of the cd perfectly fine. i really don't know what to make of this.

ok, i ended up getting "inf file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 32768. setup cannot continue. press any key to exit." after waiting quite a while.

maybe i shoulda mentioned that this is win xp with sp2 slipstreamed. dunno if that will help. weird though that the cd works fine on the other computer but turned up this error on the laptop.

Two potential reasons for a problem during installation, either:
Your RAM has errored addresses or is too small for install (Too small shouldn't be a problem in this case considering that your particular laptop ships usually with XP Home)

The other potential is simply that your disc and CD-drive needs a clean. I'm guessing you've done that to your disc however you might need a proper CD-drive cleaner otherwise you might accidentally put too much force on the actual read head and cause it to misalign.

I would suggest the cleaning and then attempt the install, if that still errors then you'll need to look into getting a program to check your RAM. You won't be able to repair the RAM unfortunately if it has errors, unfortunately it will mean finding a place to get a RAM replacement (And perhaps upgrade)

Further to Stryder's advice, check your BIOS and other firmware is up to date. I had W2K suffer a similar installation error on a Compaq server, and it was a BIOS error.

I doubt it's a hardware error. I tried HPs online diagnostic tool and the CD ROM drive passed when I used a different data CD but once I tried the test with the XP cd in the drive, it said "Test Failed. Unable to read a sector. Please try another non copy protected CD-ROM disk. (CD-ROM diagnostic (D:))"

Besides which, I've just cleaned the lens. I'm pretty sure it's not a memory problem; other CDs work on this computer. I'm completely baffled since the Windows XP cd is working just fine on the computer I burned it on when I run it in Windows AND when I run it from boot. That computer is SP1 but the laptop is SP2. I've uninstalled Norton and other bloatware to no avail.

i had exactly the opposite problem.
i installed winME just fine.
after the install every cd i put in the drive wouldn't work.
i tried accessing the drive in explorer and was told i needed administrater rights to access it, winME doesn't require admin rights for anything.
reformatted and reinstalled was of no use.
finally i took it to a shop.
cause? bad cdrom drive.

did you overburn your cd? put more than the rated capacity on it?
some drives have a problem with overburned cd-r's.

Only other solution is to write another CD just burn it at a slower speed (4x or so)

Ok Stryder. I tried a different slipstream of SP2, without all the other customizations I made. I am getting the same problem as this guy: http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/browse_thread/thread/dfa3abebe22893b7/45127e08038db2ee%2345127e08038db2ee

Stub loader for WINNT32 setup program has encountered a problem and needs to close.

At least I am getting the blue full screen to show up this time when I click install. Except that it's going nowhere.. Tried using the cd from boot and got something about cdboot: couldn't find ntldr

This is killing me..

I jokingly said "try installing Linux" earlier, then deleted it...... but now this problem has me curious.

I would recommend attempting to install one of the linux distros.

I might install Linux sometime in the near future but right now I don't have the time to learn something new and I will be needing to install some Windows specific software to do some work.

It could very well be that the stupid cd rom isn't bootable but I'm curious about the stub loader program. And if the cd rom of a laptop costing close to $2000 isn't bootable then I don't know what the F(*&$(&$ kinda dangerous thing I'm going to do..

Just a quick read from another site suggests that the Stub-Loader reads partition information, considering that you've had many failed installation attempts it's possible that your partition is now damaged and this is why you aren't getting any further.

You might have to start from the beginning with a Formatted Drive again, make sure it's clean before installing. If you've an old win98 disc, you can boot to the commandline from it and actual use FDISK and FORMAT to clean the drive up before installing XP, of course make sure you are using a FULL install disc and not just an Upgrade for this to work.

One other thing... Check www.bootdisk.com they have some links that will help

laptop does not have a floppy drive.

Another way around this problem (if you were wanting to do what Stryder suggested) is to download this
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?channelpath=%2Fen_us%2FSupport%2FSoftware+Downloa ds%2FTop+Downloads&downloadID=19


This is the CD for setting up Maxtor hard drives-- however, a few of the features on the CD can be used with ANY hard drive. One of which is the ability to cleanly format a drive (the feature on the CD is called "zero fill drive").

Of course, I could be wrong, and there is a way to *easily* create a bootable CD version of the win98 boot disk. I seem to remember the CD burner program 'Nero burning rom' having a method where you could do this- I have no clue how it works though.

Just before that..

It appears when I get the cdboot: ntldr cannot be found message on boot, if i press enter really quickly, the blue dos screen for windows xp setup still loads.

now. i want to get rid of my preexisting windows and clean install a new one. but when i try to select the partition with my c: drive, setup tells me that there is an existing operating system (windows) on the partition, and that installing another operating system on the same partition is highly unrecommended.

So. I was under the impression that if you selected a partition to install windows xp on, the partition would be formatted before installation. i guess this is not true?

i have tried selecting the 'delete partition' option to delete c: but setup says that i can't because some setup files have been stored on the partition.

how can i go about clean installing in peace??? i don't want a situation where i format the partition only to discover that installing windows is not an option because errors continue to come up, leaving my laptop as a doorstop.

It can be a tricky one, if you have an NTFS partition currently then a commandline method of deleting the WINDOWS folder is made more difficult because of how NTFS is, if it's FAT32 then you can quite happily delete the windows folder, without it the system can't detect an OS and can get on with formatting it.

From bootdisk.com came the link for here:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/formatting_drives_using_xp_cd.htm

This should give you a rundown of how to get rid of your old partition and create a new one.

however, a few of the features on the CD can be used with ANY hard drive. One of which is the ability to cleanly format a drive (the feature on the CD is called "zero fill drive").


i have a similar utility for my western digital drive and it fits on a floppy.
although it can detect any drive on your system it will only work for western digital drives.

about zero fill.
expect for this process to take HOURS. my wd drive (80 GB) would take 6 hours to zero fill.

It can be a tricky one, if you have an NTFS partition currently then a commandline method of deleting the WINDOWS folder is made more difficult because of how NTFS is, if it's FAT32 then you can quite happily delete the windows folder, without it the system can't detect an OS and can get on with formatting it.

From bootdisk.com came the link for here:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/formatting_drives_using_xp_cd.htm

This should give you a rundown of how to get rid of your old partition and create a new one.


Stryder, that link does not help me because the XP cd itself does not allow me to delete the partition, the reason being that I started the install in Windows and so the setup files have been copied onto that very partition. so i need some other utility which i can burn to cd (i dont have floppies) and use to get rid of the partition. and once i do get that utility, i have to figure out if im deleting or formatting the partition (if the two operations are not the same).

i am not versed in formatting programs and so on and the bootdisk site has so many options, so that I do not know which one is right for me. besides which, most of them seem to be for floppies.

you have me totally confused.
the XP cd that you have has options to delete partitions and format your drive.
if these options are not available then you have an OEM release of XP.

I said the option of deleting the partition is THERE but I can't select it because it says I can't delete the partition because the Windows setup files have been copied there. So either I figure out how to delete the Windows setup files (which would be a lot nicer), or I find an alternate way of just formatting everything.

Okay what I suggest after a little digging around in my old archive of bootfiles is going to www.freedos.org and downloading and burning the ISO to a CD (at no more than x4 speed for safety measures)

It shouldn't take to long, my version of freeDOS was approx 11mb in size.

freeDOS contains both FDISK (For creating/manipulating partitions) and FORMAT for formating them. You should find it bootable and it should allow you to clean your drive of everything that was already there.

What you do is boot up, let it get to commandline after it loads drivers etc. Once there type FDISK, it will take you into a partition system. Make sure you remove all current partitions before creating a new one. Once you've done that you might have to restart the computer for the partition table to be saved. Keep the FreeDOS disc in the drive and reboot back to command line...

You'll then have to type FORMAT C: (which I hope is the only partition you create for simplicity) the program will then format that partition.

Once thats done, reboot with your XP disc.

You should then find that your installation will no longer suggest there is anything more wrong with the drive, and it should go about attempting to do its own format and converting the drive from FAT32 to NTFS.

go to the hard drive manufacturers website and downlowd the drives formatting and partitioning utilities. burn the files to a cd-r then boot your machine with it.
it will give you the options you need.
you will need the drives name and model number to download the utilities.
if asked to format your drive choose quick format and ntfs

freeDOS contains both FDISK (For creating/manipulating partitions) and FORMAT for formating them.

i installed a floppy drive on my computer when i bought incase i wanted to install winME on it. i also have a boot floppy created in winME which has fdisk and format on it. i could not get fdisk to function properly with the ntfs partitions, i said i had a mbr error.
it worked fine for fat 32 partitions though.

Indeed FDISK in this instance won't cover NTFS, however thats where the XP disc will deal with the formatting. The entire use of FDISK is just to get rid of the problem data from the drive.

Can you use FDISK to delete an NTFS partition? Or will it simply not see it.

Can you use FDISK to delete an NTFS partition? Or will it simply not see it.
the drives will show up in the fdisk app. but the total disk size reported for the drive doesn't match the actual size. keep in mind i am talking about fdisk created by winME.
on a clean install of XP i suggest going to the drive makers website and using their disk utilities.

i find it odd that WD would name their format and partitioning software 'data protector' when in fact it's data destroyer.

Hmm.. Panic mode. Ok I erased the old partition and created a new one and then formatted. Now I'm getting the same ntldr message, except that the windows cd isn't loading..

edit: well scratch that, i guess my computer really is retarded. i plopped in about three of the windows xp copies i made since last night and finally the blue setup screen came. right now, im doing a full ntfs format on c:.

Here's to praying nothing else goes wrong..

i have a similar utility for my western digital drive and it fits on a floppy.
although it can detect any drive on your system it will only work for western digital drives.

about zero fill.
expect for this process to take HOURS. my wd drive (80 GB) would take 6 hours to zero fill.

The maxtor CD has an option called "zero fill- quick" which does it in about 10 seconds.
I think the hour long version is if you wanted to totally and completely wipe out the drive of all existing data to the point where the drive was literally filled with 0s. The quick method removes the table on the hard drive that says where all the data is located (meaning it's still there, but overwritten as the drive is filled to capacity). The long slow version of zero fill does exectly what it says (fills the drive with real zeroes mening the drive is *literally* blank and raw).

Here's to praying nothing else goes wrong..
well southstar? we're all on the edge of our seats waiting . . .

Hey I built a new computer from scrach and when I try to instal windows a blue screen pops up saying windows is be shut down to prevent damage. and it says dumping hardrive. I set my bios to default settins. Tried using repair. and tried saving over the other portion. Please Help!!!!

Sorry guys. I couldn't get it fixed before I left home but I need a little more help.

I think my problem was that the CD drive was worn out. I bought an (expensive) 1 GB memory stick to replace the worthless SDRAM only to find that the errors persisted. I formatted, deleted, and remade partitions until the hard drive was a maze. And yet the copy errors persisted. But today I tried cleaning the lens with a wet cotton bud (again) (couldn't think of anything safer to use) and the install went through for the most part, just a few copy errors. The big problem is that drivers.cab simply refused to be copied during the install regardless of which Windows XP cd i put into the CD drive. I have now burnt 30-40 copies of four different versions of Windows XP and none of them have done the job flawlessly. To put the story short, I skipped drivers.cab so that setup could go on copying the files to the hard drive but now I need someone to tell me how to manually copy drivers.cab to the hard drive because the keyboard, mouse, and so on aren't working when i enter the windows install. at least i've gotten past the damn blue dos screen and i'm seeing some visuals now but help me get past this hurdle.

oh, and somehow the cd door is jammed and won't open so i'm stuck with a doubly worthless computer that can't read CDs. i'll try to fix that in the meantime but i'm sure someone here knows how to manually copy the file to the hard drive and where to copy it to.


really, i would just buy a new computer but all the money went into my $1400 desktop which is sitting back home.. It could also be the hard drive but I checked the hard drive with HDD Regenerator and no errors were found. The CD drive whirrs and clicks and scrapes like its dying an awful lot before copying a file though.

oh, and i'm considering buying an inexpensive external cd burner from newegg.com. if any of you are familiar with that place and can recommend one for me i'll be very grateful. This one (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827136081) doesn't look too bad and I'm hoping the read quality is as good as the write quality is. My current joke of a burner reads and writes in one, but can't even read RW discs. I'm not sure if my laptop, an HP Pavilion zx5000, supports USB 2.0 but the online HP manual claims it does.

I' having a really big problem on xp aswel its sending me crazy. I am trying to re-install Windows XP Professional onto my computer. Here is some history. The version that was previously on there had some errors so i decided to start from scratch regretting it now. So I have formatted the computer, and everything works fine there. The windows setuip files copy, and the computer restarts. When it restarts to begin the installation, and it gets to the WIndows XP screen, the little blue status bar goes accross a couple of times, then just freezes. I have tried this several times, and always the same result. I have also disconnected my DVD Burner and Floppy Dick Drive, so that there is less hardware to detect during installation. This has made no difference, as it just prolonges the computer freezing. Can any1 plaz help i really dont know what to do im not an expert on computers. Thankyou.

if you aren't an expert on computers then it's very possible you introduced static into your machine when you disconnected the drive cables.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS ground yourself each and everytime you reach inside your machine by touching its case.

it's best to leave all your hardware connected.

okay, how long does the machine hang? is there drive activity? does the hard drive light flicker?

Sorry i didnt disconnect my hardware i copid that in from somehwere coz he had the exact same problem as me apart from that everything is the same. The xp bar goes across just after its rebooted to continue with xp installation then freezes after it has been across a few times. The hardrive light stops flickering. i left i for a good hour hoping it might load but it didnt.

So I have formatted the computer, and everything works fine there....

Did you just format the existing drive partition or did you delete the original partition, re-make it clean and then format?

If not, try doing that, see if it makes any difference. If you've got a boot floppy from an older version of windows use that to wipe the drive partition, re-set and format - that way when you come to re-try installing XP there's absolutely nothing whatsoever from the previous installation remaining.

ME used to do this thing where it hid a special installation file on its own separate partition - quite invisibly. You're previous installstion of Pro might have done a similar trick and consequently muck things up. Worth a shot trying at anyrate, get it out the way.

You say your previous installation had errors on it - were these drive errors or installation bugger ups - in other words, are you using an old or possibly damaged hard drive?

One other thing - when installing Pro - make sure you tell it to install to an NTFS partition - it will create it for you. If you're currently installing to FAT32, this could be where you're coming unstuck.

Give it a try, let us know how you get on.

If you can't find an old windows disk to do a repartition and format, you can use www.freedos.org to get a DOS version to do it. It will not create an NTFS partition, however it should be enough to remove any old installs.

What the system is usually doing during the XP screen and bar is it attempts to load drivers and activate them with the various hardware. Some hardware will generate stalls, one notible type is Ethernet/LAN cards since it's possible that the computer will freeze and wait for a connection to the network. If the network card hasn't been configured it's obviously going to be waiting a long time to timeout and say that it isn't working.

During install it can be a good idea to remove the Network card to begin with and reinsert it once you actually have booted down after the operating system is installed.

You might want to also check your BIOS settings, if you have changed things on your system you might of altered the settings too. Perhaps its no longer detecting your Harddrive correctly because you have the wrong cable slot attached etc.

I would suggest trying to find out everything about what makes up your computer, from What Motherboard, Processor, RAM you have right through to the Hard drives, Rom's and other various hardware you have attached.

If you can Flash your Motherboard with the Newest Available Flashrom, make sure the BIOS settings are configured for the Right Processor & RAM (and various speeds) Configure if your GFX card is PCI-E or AGP (Since most BIOS's support one or other at one time, not both and only if your card supports both). These things really should be a priority before installing an OS, since mucking around with them after installation can cause alterations in the OS's behaviour.

I'll try those today but i think the problem may be when i deleted the patition i deleted drivers for my harware and that might be whats making it freeze. The only problem is how do i install why system drivers from the CD without an operating system.

on older OS's such as WINme, 98, 95 when the computer hangs you are supposed to restart your machine.
after you restart you continue with the previous attempt to install, you do not install a fresh copy.
it sounds like your installation is hanging at the hardware detection phase.

it doesnt seem to give me the chance to continue unless the setup continues after the logo stage where it freezes it reboots to continue with setup and then either gives me the chance to boot from cd again which gives me the same options as i had at the beginning or leys me continue to the log screen when it freezes im stuck in limbo lol. Im working on getting an old copy of windows now to try that

i installed windows 2000 on it then tried reinstalling windows xp. It said an upgrade from 200 to xp was not supported so it would have to be a new installation then after it copied the files and restardted the same problem again it can't get passed the xp logo screen. I'm working on intalling windows 98 instead to see if thats any better apart from that i don't know what to do. windows 2000 loaded fine though.

Well, no. Trying to install any version of windows over a previous installation, unless it's an upgrade edition, will terminate the whole installation process before it's begun. You have to completely wipe your partitions, reset and format the new partition clean. Follow Mr Stryders link to download an older 9x series boot disk and use the partition and formatting tools on that to wipe everything and re-format.

You said previously that:I have also disconnected my DVD Burner and Floppy Dick Drive, so that there is less hardware to detect during installation.

How exactly are you going about installing without you're DVD drive connected - I'm a bit confused here - you say something to leopold about copying in from someone...

Are you installing over a network or some such?

no sorry i put that in by accident i copied another guys post who was having the same problem as me but 4got to delete that bit. Im trying to download a copy of windows 98 no but can't figure out how i can turn the downloaded zipped files into cd images to burn.

what is the extension? zip? rar?

you don't burn the image to disk, you burn the files in the image to disk

Hey thanks everyone for your help your ideas were really good and it was great of you to try and help me. In the end i got myself a new version of xp and tried that this one worked fine i think the other one just wouldnt work with that computer. Thanks again every1.

:) .... Duff copy, eh? Typical..... Our pleasure, glad you're all fixed up at anyrate and thanks for letting us know. Have fun,

A ;)

Heh, seems you beaten me to my next suggestion, "The duff copy". Obviously wouldn't be a problem using an original disc unless suffering major scratches (Obviously Win95 disc's are good for coffee mats but I wouldn't put your copy of XP there just yet)

Hopefully Microsofts 'Vista' will lower the "Y'argh, pieces of eight" factor by introducing 'Budget' versions to the shelves (Although many a Salty Sea Dogger is more than likely going to be use to the old habits, which truly die hard)

Glad you could keep us informed like Mr A says, since if the problem pops up again your results will obviously be pulled on as a potential reasoning in the future.(Probably sooner than later in retrospect)

:) ... On reflection, indeed. Would help enormously if people just said upfront - "Oh, by the way chaps - it's a dodgy copy of .......... (<----insert OS here) I'm having problems with...."

Xp is a pretty tough bastard to crack in comparison to the 9x series, far too many truly useless downloadables of it available not to come unstuck with it really.