WHS installation hangs after first reboot!

[Severian]

I'm doing a clean install of WHS on a machine that was also a WHS, so I know the hardware is good for WHS. However, after I boot off the DVD drive, and enter my key, WHS spends probably a half hour doing the first part of the GUI setup, then after it does the first reboot, the system just sits there at the "Press any key to boot from DVD" prompt, and never moves on to the next stage of the install. If I change the boot order back to hard drive first, the install also doesn't continue.

I have formatted the hard drive to blank NTFS, so it's not like the WHS install sees an older install on the drive.

I'm using an old P4 2.8 on a Gigabyte 8K1100 mainboard. SATA ports are disabled in case that was an issue. I'm using an IDE DVDRW drive and hard drive. Everything shows up in the BIOS normally detected, and I've tried switching out both the hard drive and the DVD drive, and the exact same issue recurs.

I've installed WHS a few times, and this problem seems to pop up from time to time, for reasons that I can't seem to pin down. I haven't found any answers via Google, so I'd like to know if anyone here has any insight.

thanks

 

[Chiefcrowe]

my first idea is a possible failing HD? have you tried running drive diagnostics?

 

[Severian]

yep, the drive checks out fine. tried another drive that also checks out fine and get the same issue.

 

[RebateMonger]

In this 2007 discussion, somebody ended up with the IDENTICAL symptoms you are seeing. I don't necessarily see a final solution here, but the last poster claimed to get the install to finish by changing his/her boot order DURING that first reboot:

http://social.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/whssoftware/thread/a0dc376f-61cf-459e-bf16-ac32512b3382/

Is that hard drive the only hard drive in the system? Have all USB devices been removed, including flash drives, hard drives, and memory cards in reader slots?

 

[Stevem627]

It may be related to your boot sequence setup in your BIOS. Make sure your harddrive is first one in the sequence.

 

[Severian]

Rebatemonger: Yep, it's the only hard drive in the system, I'm going to add the pool drives after the installation. No flash drives or memory readers.

Stevem627: yep, tried that, and still no go.

I ended up trying a third IDE drive, and the install went off without a hitch. I re-ran diagnostics on both of the other IDE drives and they pass both short and long tests without any problems.

Still a mystery to me why they can't complete the WHS installation, but thankfully I have plenty of extra HD's around.

Thanks for everyone's input!

 

[nerp]

What kind of HD is it?

 

[Severian]

it was an IBM/Hitachi 60gb IDE drive. still passes all diagnostics, but won't install WHS properly. The 160gb WD IDE drive I replaced it with had no problems.

 

[JackMDS]

60GB is bellow the minimum size requirement for WHS.

 

[RebateMonger]

Mimimum disk size for the primary hard drive on WHS is 70 GB. I don't know why you didn't get a warning.

I've actually seen two different minimum disk size numbers: 70 GB and 64 GB, but both are larger than 60 GB:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server