anyone ever have problem with install cd freezing? I have a machine that won't boot safe or normal, it freezes after a few seconds. I tried to boot to recovery console, but the install cd freezes at "Setup is starting Windows". I have replaced motherboard, but still same problems. I also tried reverting to failsafe bios and disabling sound/lan/etc in bios. I have also tried pulling components out. just cdrom, ram, cpu right now, but it still freezes up, even with brand new mobo in. any ideas? I thought maybe cpu, but cpu faults would be more random, the computer fails at the same time, everytime. locks up hard too, no keyboard activity. i ran memtest for a few hours and i swapped out memory, no luck.
booted to a live linux cd fine though...

any ideas? i am going to try to get my hands on a spare cpu in the meantime.

specs:
athlon xp 2200+
128 pc2100 ddr
win xp pro
new mobo = asrock k7vm3

Is their keyboard activity in the bios just test it by moving cursor their.

If you had keyboard activity in the bios and not on the actual OS then it seems to buy a new power supply for your mobo

just remember buy the compatible power supply to your peripherilz and hardware and buy the higher amperes not on watts

Try toggling ACPI/APIC settings in your BIOS

I probably should have posted my fix at the time, but I eventually got this one. I googled up that the bios acpi settings usually affect this, but changing settings didn't help. What looked like happened was that the user had hw issues, so decided to have her tech friend repair winxp, who then went ahead and botched the repair (and it looks like he/she tried to repair xphome with xppro). On top of that, install cd was crashing because wrong hal was being detected/set? I had to manually select the hal to run a repair.

So, for anyone troubleshooting a freezing install cd, try changing hal/pc type if problems don't seem to be hw related.

And for anyone with pc problems, don't hire someone from the baking industry to repair your computer.