Problem during installation... Weird one.

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From: Mathieu Paquette (leprince_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 09:30:58 -0500

Hi,

This post is lenghty but I've included as much details as possible; please
tell me if you need any other details.

I just bought a new system for my mom. It's a P4SP-MX board, with everything
onboard (she's gonna browse the net and do people's taxes on it, so she
doesn't need much more...)

The machine has a CDBurner-DVD reader combo drive, and that's pretty much
it. For the rest, it's quite standard; no PCI-added cards, nothing. It runs
a Celeron processor with 256megs of RAM.

Well, here's the problem I have. I tried with two different copies of Win2k
(one that I burned with a streamlined SP4 built-in and another original
legit 120-day trial I got at a training that has no SP built-in), and both
sort of "crash" at the same place; at the first part of the graphical part
of the install, when it says "Windows is now detecting devices such as your
keyboard and mouse, you screen might flicker, yada yada yada". What happens
is that the bar goes through halfway, then stop moving. The computer is
still responding (ie. the mouse still moves, the keyboard's light go on and
off when I press cap lock, etc), but nothing more happens. I left the
computer in that state overnight, to no avail.

I've tried different things; I underclocked the CPU, I put PNP OS = Yes
instead of NO in the BIOS, changed keyboard, unplugged the mouse, nothing
works.

Only thing I haven't done is to install the latest BIOS, because I didn't
have a floppy drive anywhere else in the house beside that machine and I had
to get to bed (it was late and I was working this morning) so I didn't want
to unplug the floppy, put it in another machine, etc... But now I'm at work
I'll write a floppy with the latest BIOS, maybe that'll help, but I'm a bit
skeptic.

So, anyone got any idea as to what could solve this issue ?

Oh, last but not least, when I got the system there was a WinXP preinstalled
on the computer (OEM pre-installation, you know where you have to enter the
comp's name and stuff then it boots into Windows); I completed that part,
thinking I might get away with installing Windows on the machine. It worked
perfectly; I proceeded to boot in Windows, uninstalled a few of the crap
that came preinstalled, rebooted, worked, rebooted again, then Windows asked
to be registered; since I did not have a valid key for XP (I own 2k but not
XP, I don't really like XP much, I think 2k does what I need with less
system resources), I popped my 2k CD in and proceeded to install it, and
that's when it crashed. Yes I deleted all partitions, recreated a 20 gig
partition on the 40 gig drive, formatted it ntfs, etc....

I've installed Win2k countless times in my life, but that's the first time
something like this happens to me.

Any idea ?

Thank you.

Mathieu

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