Re: Stuck in Setup loop ... (long)
From: Nepatsfan (nepatsfan_at_SBXXXVIII.com)
Date: 02/28/05
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Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:00:29 -0500
If you were able to create the Bart-PE CD then you should have no
problem creating this boot CD:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/howto.htm
It's based on Bart's CD but includes a whole lot of additional
utilities. I've only used this a couple of times and had no
problems installing network adapters.
To increase the chances that someone can help you with this
problem, you might want to post it in the windowsxp.general
newsgroup as well as alt.sys.pc-clone.dell.
In spite of the successful hardware tests you ran, this sounds
more like a hardware issue than a Windows problem.
Good luck
--
Nepatsfan
"Mike Faithfull" <mouse-potato@surfmail.com> wrote in message
news:4223934c$0$10953$cc9e4d1f@news-text.dial.pipex.com...
> Long story ... Dell desktop Dimension 2400 running XP Home ...
> It appeared
> to 'lose' a few files Saturday evening. I spent until the early
> hours of
> Sunday morning searching for and downloading disk utilities
> with undelete
> and file rescue programs (on a second PC so's not to alter
> anything on the
> disc!) and had no success in finding the files which I thought
> I might have
> accidentally deleted rather than 'lost' due to some technical
> problem.
> Anyway, it was late and I was tired, so I left the PC powered
> up and went to
> bed intending to resume the battle Sunday morning.
>
> When I got back to it on Sunday, the screen was blank, and no
> amount of
> mouse wiggling could coax it back to life again - CtrlAltDel
> could not
> invoke Task Manager .. just nothing. So I hit the power
> switch, and after a
> suitable pause, hit it again. Now, the system booted as far as
> the
> 'Welcome' screen, but there it hung. Again, the only way out
> was to turn
> off the power. I repeated this cycle three or four times, but
> nothing
> different happened. So, I decided to RTFM, found the original
> O/S CD (still
> sealed in its envelope) and followed the instructions in the
> manual to
> recover the system. I chose to 'repair' things 'cos I didn't
> want to
> re-install XP completely and run the chance of losing more
> data.
>
> Well, everything seemed to proceed as expected until the point
> where Setup
> was "Completing Installation" according to the legend above the
> little
> coloured bar - this was at a point where I could expect it to
> be finished in
> 25 minutes according to another message elsewhere on the
> screen.
> Unfortunately it never got any further than that - listening
> carefully and
> watching the indicator light it was clear that there was no
> disc activity
> and the process had 'hung'. Again, the only way out was to hit
> the power
> switch.
>
> On re-applying power, the system was clever enough to realise
> that it was
> part way through doing something fairly important and it told
> me "Setup is
> restarting ...". Regrettably, it then followed the same route
> as before,
> and hung again during the "Completing Installation" phase. And
> again. And
> again. And again.
>
> Oh, at some point - not sure where, it's getting a bit hazy now
> but it was
> fairly early on in the proceedings - I did try to restore to a
> previous
> 'known good' configuration but that didn't work.
>
> I've spent a good while researching the Microsoft support info
> and there are
> many articles on 'Setup stops responding ...' but not at the
> 'completing
> installation' stage, it seems. As a desperate final measure, I
> used the
> Recovery Console to fix the boot sector on the disc and then to
> fix the
> master boot record - which it reported as non-standard or
> corrupt. Seeing
> that message filled me with hope that it would now boot
> happily, but still
> nothing seems to be any different. Using the inbuilt facility I
> have run
> hardware diagnostics on the CPU, memory and disc and all tests
> passed
> without error.
>
> I've made a bootable CD (Bart-PE) which provides a limited
> sub-set of
> Windows functions, and I had intended to use it to copy the
> most important
> files across a network connection to the other PC before
> re-formatting the
> disc and re-building from scratch, but the program isn't able
> to install
> networking for some reason ("Can't install network adapter").
> I am able to
> use the program to look at boot logs and setup logs on the hard
> disc, but
> there's masses of data there, and I don't have the knowledge
> that would let
> me recognise any particular failure message as being
> significant in the
> contect of the present difficulty anyway!
>
> I had thought of removing the hard disc and installing it
> temporarily as a
> slave drive in the second PC, but the second PC is running
> Win98 and it
> would not, I'm advised, be able to cope with the NTFS file
> system on the XP
> disc.
>
> So, before I finally give up and face the loss of precious
> data, please can
> anyone suggest anything more I can try. Please?
>
> Oh, and if this isn't really the best group to be asking this
> question,
> please will you accept my apologies and point me in the right
> direction? Ta
> much.
>
>
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