XP Install Freezes Starting Windows

[owensdj]

I'm trying to install XP Pro onto a machine that used to run Win95. I just finished installing XP Pro onto an almost identical machine but it didn't freeze during the install. Both machines have the same motherboard, BIOS version, processor, memory, PCI and ISA cards. This 2nd machine freezes during the early text-mode part of the setup when the install says "Setup is starting Windows."

This machine has a Shuttle AV61 rev. 1.4 motherboard(VIA Apollo Pro chipset), 384MB of PC100 memory(2 modules), SiS 6326 AGP video card, 3COM 3C905C-TX NIC, Lucent Win Modem, Avance Logic ALS120 chipset ISA sound card.

Thanks for any suggestions you can give me.

 

[kurt454]

Strip out everything but the essentials, then install. XP's installer is kind of touchy.

 

[owensdj]

kurt454, thanks for the reply. I tried installing XP with just the video card, hard drive, and CD-ROM, but it still froze.

 

[MainFramed]

Originally posted by: kurt454
Strip out everything but the essentials, then install. XP's installer is kind of touchy.

i agree with kurt

 

[Whitney]

Check this out.

 

[owensdj]

Whitney, thanks, but I've already went through that Microsoft Knowledge Base Article. I tried what it said about forcing a non-ACPI HAL and the XP install didn't freeze at the same point. It went on and was able to format the drive and copy the files to it. It froze when it said it was restarting the computer.

 

[kurt454]

One other thought for you. XP will not install on my machine with my Gainward Geforce3 Ti 200 card. I always have to switch a pci video card in, install, then switch it back. Might try removing the SIS agp card, and sticking an old pci card in. Also, XP will hang up if you have some kind of oddball hard drive. All else fails, you might test your memory in another machine, but it sounds more like a hardware conflict to me.

 

[owensdj]

kurt454, I already tried taking out the AGP video card and putting in an old Diamond Multimedia PCI card I had. In fact, I took out all of the cards and tried the install with just the old PCI card and it still locked at the same point. I've tried the install with both a new 40GB Western Digital drive and a Fujisu ~6GB drive. Same freeze during the install for both drives.

I ran Memtest86 on the memory, so I don't think that's a problem. To make sure, I tried the install with just one of the memory modules at a time. Same freeze with both the 128MB and 256MB module.

 

[Grym]

You could try making the 6 boot disks and starting the installation from there, I had a similar problem, went that route and the installation went smoothly.

also if nothing else, do an install of 98 onto the machine, then do an upgrade, that is another way i got around the locking up issue.

 

[Grym]

Here is the Win Xp Pro tool's web site

Make Boot Tool

 

[VicodiN]

The only way to upgrade from Win95 to WinXP/2k would be to reformat your harddrive, then install the OS wanted... You cannot install a NTFS using OS into a computer currently using fat16 directly, without converting your file system... Yes, it's a bgi pain in the neck... But it's rather painless... Except,of course, for the backupping of all of your files...

Note:
As you probably know from upgrading your other computer, many Win95 programs arent compatible with XP (go figure)... I found this out the hard way, and had to upgrade drivers galore fer 'outdated' programs that I still wished to use...

 

[TheWart]

i had a similar problem and it turned out to be a spotty RAM module that prevented XP from setting up.