Windows XP endless install loop.

What's going on:

Boot machine, XP cd fires up and "Setup is inspecting your system bla bla bla".
Choose to install XP on the only partition on the only hdd installed.
Quick format, full format, doesn't matter.
Setup formats (either quick or full) and then copies the files before the first reboot.
Reboot.
"Setup is inspecting your system bla bla bla."

It just absolutely will not move on to phase 2 where you get the graphical install interface

Asus P5W DH Deluxe with a E6400 conroe..

- initially doing this with 4x1gb sticks of ram installed, a sata data drive, promise pci ide controller card, etc. removed ALL of that except for 1 stick of ram, which I memtested.

- Seagate Barracude 200gb ide drive set as master, I've tried 2 different cdrom drives as slave on the one and only ide channel the motherboard has a connection for. Switching drives didn't change anything.

- disabled everything extraneous I could think of in bios - com port, printer port, sata controller.

Just... can't get it to install properly, and this is driving me nuts. I'm completely without a desktop at the moment which is pretty bad because I need it for contract work I do.

Any ideas?

Oh - bios is currently set to boot from cdrom, then hdd, but switching those around has no effect at all on what happens, and using the boot selection popup via bios to boot directly from the hdd after phase 1 STILL results in "setup is inspecting your hardware bla bla bla."

Wit's end.

it sounds like the harddrive is not bootable so the machine is booting from the cd rom instead.

The machine should boot from the hd after the first installation. What happens if you remove the cd rom after the first restart?

Do you have an active primary partition on the hd ?

thefly said:

it sounds like the harddrive is not bootable so the machine is booting from the cd rom instead.

The machine should boot from the hd after the first installation. What happens if you remove the cd rom after the first restart?

Do you have an active primary partition on the hd ?

Click to expand...

Initially the partition was a properly-booting XP install with my old hardware. The first few times I tried this I quick and full formatted the partition.

The last time I deleted the partition via the XP install, and told it to install XP on the now empty drive. I can't imagine the install process not making this a primary partition.

Kill the mbr on the disk.

then format the drive again and reinstall.

thefly said:

Kill the mbr on the disk.

then format the drive again and reinstall.

Click to expand...

Deleting the partition via the install and having it set up a new partition wouldn't do that?

It should. Your right.

You delete the partition completely created a new one? or just formatted an existed partition?

Both. =/

I can try deleting the partition and then doing a full format, but I don't see how that will be any different than the combination of full formats, quick formats, and the one time I did delete the partition.

If you take the disc out, what error does it give you when trying to boot to the drive? It may still have a corrupted MBR, I don't think formatting the whole drive does anything unless it is a "low level" format such as "Darik's Nuke and Boot".

thideras said:

If you take the disc out, what error does it give you when trying to boot to the drive? It may still have a corrupted MBR, I don't think formatting the whole drive does anything unless it is a "low level" format such as "Darik's Nuke and Boot".

Click to expand...

I guess this is Asus' version of "Invalid system disk or disk error":

"Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key"

I'll try to figure out some way of completely wiping the drive, but my options are pretty limited. I can't get Ubuntu 7.4 to boot on this rig either. Maybe i'll try installing freebsd or something.

This 200gb seagate is the only clear drive I have right now. Without a working computer I can't empty any other drives of important stuff. =/

edit - and to be explicit, if I choose this drive from the F8 boot menu it immediately jumps to a reboot countdown, then reboots.

xp recovery console has some limited commands like fixmbr and fixboot.

worth a shot. It's probably something to do with the hd being used in another xp installation.

Use "Darik's Nuke and Boot" (DBAN) and nuke that drive with zeroes! That will take care of the MBR if that is indeed the issues

Let it do one pass, verify, fill with zeros. Shouldn't take too long.

I think I'm pretty much boned here. Tried burning DBAN to a cd using this laptop, looked like it worked but the desktop won't boot from it, and hey now the cd burner won't open. Right clicking it and selecting eject gives an error "unable to mount cd, there is probably no media in the drive." Oh really? Ya think?

WTB working stuff. Anything, please. =/

Brb, rebooting!

I'm confused, you are trying to open the drive from within an OS? Powering it down should fix that issue.

*nix has a tendency to think it knows better when it comes to the eject button on an optical drive. If you mount a cd/dvd (or automount, or some kinda of ephemeral error like what just happened to me) pressing the eject button does nothing because silly human, what are you doing!

Anyway, I'm done with this for tonight, been beating my head against it since early this afternoon.

Tomorrow I will probably build my bsd server with the Athlon64 3400+ kit I removed from the problem machine and free up one of the 160gb sata drives I have, then -

a) all new (different, at least) cables with the setup I have in the e6400 now (ide 200gb and ide cd rom drive)

and if that fails

b) sata system drive with ide cdrom drive.

If that doesn't work then I just don't know what to do.

Ok, bad news update:

Completely different harddrive, ide cable, and cdrom drive, and it's doing the same thing.

The 'new' drive had a bsd installation on it, so I deleted the partition, had xp install create and full-format a new one, and on reboot it did the same thing - did not move on to phase 2, but wanted to start all over again.

Selecting boot menu (F8 during post) and choosing the maxtor results in... (waiting, doing it now...) odd, it didn't reboot, but moved on to boot from the cdrom drive. I'm guessing since boot failed from the hard disk it moved on to the normal boot list?

Anyway... I've never had this much trouble installing windows. The only common items between these 2 installs are the mobo kit and video card. =/

It sounds like the only thing that hasn't changed is BIOS settings or the motherboard itself. Can you see if that exact drive and cable work on another machine?

Not really, unfortunately, but cable: it works enough for the install cd to boot, format and copy files, etc. (I.E., no issues there.) and drive: was pulled working from another box.

I'm currently downloading freebsd 7.0, and I plan on pulling the 7900gt out and putting a plain vanilla pci card in instead, and trying to install freebsd on the machine. If I can get that done then I will be able to transfer files from one sata drive to another, and use the empty one as an xp install candidate. (i.e. sata channel with drive, ide channel with atapi cdrom as master.)

If that doesn't work then I will have to pull this motherboard out and go back to using my 3400+ (at which point I will be able to test this other ide drive, but dollars to donuts the 200gb original drive will install just fine if I do this.)

As for bios, I've tried several combinations of disabling extraneous features I don't need / might be causing problems (com port, sound, raid controller, etc) as well as resetting to default and only disabling full screen logo show on boot.

Very strange

You know, you are going to find a switch inside the computer that is labeled "Working" and "Broken", guess what side it will be on

That's if I don't switch the other switch from "not stomped on" to "stomped on."

I seen this before.

As strange as this sounds. It might very well be a corrupt disc. Clean the install disc up or find another. It only takes one smudge or scratch to bork an important part on the disc surface.

Pretty much.. If the initial load happens and it seems to copy ok. It knows and understands the hardware. If it fails past that. One part can be corrupt when it copies over and borks the load.

So make sure your disc is ok. The symptom of it worked peachy before. Is a giveaway of a disc that is giving you bad data somewhere along the copy phase.