XP setup freezes

[Big_Baller]

OK my friend had his windows XP messed up by some virues. All he asked me to do was reformat it for him. So I reboot with his windows cd and xp began to load the drivers. When it gets to starting setup or what ever it says right before you see the menus it simply froze. I tryethat but it wouldn't work. It just said bad command or file name. I also could not change to drive C: Same response. I then went into Fdisk and deleted the partition. Then I recreated it. I could change to drive letter C: but when I tryed to reformat it said invalid media type.

Now I have the computer at my house and I have tryed formating it from my computer in XP. The format worked and I loaded it back into his computer, But its still failing in setup at the "Setup is now loading Windows"

I ran memtest86 and his ram checks out (same thing happened to me awhile back with some bad ram) I'm going to dust it out soon here. Any suggestions?

 

[PiMpShiN]

since you're not getting much luck using the cd to do the formatting use the 6 floppy install for windows xp. you can format it and create any partions you need with the floppies. There also may be something wrong with the install disk, that happened to me before.

If none of that works im just gonna make a guess that your friend may have a boot virus, im not too knowledgable on boot virses but its possible.

 

[mayagrafix]

Could be a bad HD too. Sometimes it runs fine untill you reformat and then it goes bad. Happened to me a couple of times. Try the CD on another PC to see if it is okey then you know it has to be the friends puter HD.

 

[Big_Baller]

Ok the latest update:

I was able to install windows 98 just fine. Then I upgraded to XP. After the XP setup reboots and goes into the dos-like install (you know when your now actually in windows and its just installing) it gives me this stop error. It gives me a technicly correct answer but utterly usless. It says that some hardware failed and setup stopped so that damage would not occur. It also says somthing about a possible virus.

I thought that it might be the harddrive but when I put the HD in my comp and run all of the seagate tests it checks out just fine. I am going to take out all of the PCI cards and stuff and try installing it once more. If that dosn't work I am going to give it back to my friend and have him return it to the store he bought. I am thinking it might just be some hardware failing.

 

[turbodeuce]

Ok the latest update:

I was able to install windows 98 just fine. Then I upgraded to XP. After the XP setup reboots and goes into the dos-like install (you know when your now actually in windows and its just installing) it gives me this stop error. It gives me a technicly correct answer but utterly usless. It says that some hardware failed and setup stopped so that damage would not occur. It also says somthing about a possible virus.

Is the stop error a 0x50 error? page_fault_in_nonpaged_area??
I am running into the same problem right now and don't know if it it's a hardware problem or not.

 

[William]

Humor me and try some other video card. I have seen this EXACT problem before fixed with by doing this. Once you finish the setup then just replace the video card.

Sounds stupid but its worked twice for me on two different systems and worked for someone else I told it too.

 

[diehrd]

I would suggest you run the hard drive test diognostic disk on the drive and while you are there do a complete low level format which will write zeros to the complete drive ensuring complete erasure of it.

 

[Big_Baller]

How do I exactly do a low level format? I know what they are but never needed to do one before. I did do disk diagnostics from my computer but it found nothing. Ya they next step I was going to do was start pulling hardware. I'll try that video card.

 

[Ebola]

I cant install XP with my soundcard in. you should try unplugging some hardware.

 

[Big_Baller]

Strange. Well I took out all of the PCI cards but nothing worked. Then I just decided to revert to fail safe values in the bios after trying some other stuff. It worked. I don't know what happened and my friend said that he didn't mess with the bios but reverting to fail safe values fixed it. No problem installing xp now. He is up and running now. W00t. thx for the input guys.