Member Avatar for harro

Hi,
I have previously formatted and installed Windows 98,2000, XP and vista on many,many hard drives. I have never had this problem.
A high spec machine with 2gb ram and 250 sata 2 seagate HD.
The machine runs beautifully except that I suspect a virus infection because the security service is shut down on every reboot and I cannot use any form of antivirus. I then attempted to do a clean install of XP Pro SP 2 using a legit windows disc. I set the bios to boot to the cd and I reach the black screen which says "inspecting etc, then the message disappears and then the black blank screen.
No blue windows setup screen. Waited for 30 mins on one occasion. I have tried 5 different windows discs with no success. Yet when I boot to the HD, no problem except no antivirus. I have done a chkdisk and found no errors. I have done a system restore. No change. Has anyone got any ideas?

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Dani AI

Generated

Short summary: when XP setup stops at "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware and configuration" the problem is usually the installer stumbling over the storage/partition layer or an unsupported controller/driver — less commonly bad RAM or a faulty optical drive. The thread already shows sensible hardware checks; the notes below compile a concise, practical troubleshooting flow that works for this class of hang.

  1. Remove distractions first — unplug all nonessential USB devices, memory card readers and extra drives. Booting from a clean environment (a Linux live CD or WinPE) lets you inspect the disk without running the infected OS.
  2. Check the disk/partition metadata. Look for odd partition types (dynamic/foreign RAID) or a corrupted partition table. If the table looks inconsistent, recreate a simple MSDOS partition table and a single primary partition (this destroys data, so backup first). GParted or any live partitioning tool can do this safely.
  3. Try the SATA controller trick: switch BIOS SATA mode to IDE/Compatibility/Legacy if it is in AHCI. Stock XP install media lacks many AHCI drivers and will hang on some controllers. If you must keep AHCI for an existing install, slipstream the correct controller driver into the XP media (tools such as nLite are commonly used).
  4. Run a memory test (memtest86+) for at least one full pass if RAM faults were suspected by others in the thread. Also try the alternative optical drive or different install media to rule out read errors.
  5. Use the XP Recovery Console to repair disk structures before reinstalling:
chkdsk /r
fixmbr
fixboot

If a virus is the root cause, use an offline rescue disk/USB to scan the drive before reinstalling. After a successful install, integrate the latest service pack and controller drivers, install antivirus and update Windows before connecting the machine to the Internet.

Thanks to , , and for the hardware-oriented checks — those steps combined with the storage/driver actions above cover the typical causes of this hang.

Recommended Answers

All 6 Replies

Member Avatar for Laser

Once you've booted from the HDD, what happens when you run setup off the CD ? Maybe the problem is your CD drive hardware ?

Member Avatar for loligator

sounds like your cd drive might be busted, the cables bad/loose, or possibly if you're burning the CD from an image, the drive you're using doesn't like that brand of blank CDs. I've had that happen on several occasions and once I used a different brand of blank CD, all was good.

Member Avatar for harro

I forgot to include the fact that two dvd/rw drives are installed and I have checked they are both working ok. They both play and read anything and everything including the windows setup disks I tried.
I need to do a clean install because of the virus infection I previously mentioned.
I have just tried again and after the post I don't get the message "start booting to CD" or "boot to cd. press any key to continue"
The first thing I get is the message "setup is inspecting your computers h/w and config" This is flashed for a second or less and then the screen goes blank. No blue windows setup screen. The computer hangs (I have waited for 30mins).
The strange thing is when I reset the bios to boot to the hhd, it powers up beautifully, but security service is shut down and I can't install any av programs (ZA, NOD32, Kapersky or AVG Free). Do you think virus infection? I would appreciate any ideas. Thanks.

Member Avatar for cguan_77

hi, i remember got a thread around here cannot install xp also, they claim that it's a RAM problem... so better try it out. try another RAM..
i encountered a problem before but it was win 98 i was unable to install windows...only to find out that the processor was the culprit..

Member Avatar for harro

Hi Cguan,
I can't hit this problem for 24 hrs, but I will try our your advice and install 1 new 1gig ddr2 stick of ram and try again. I'll let you know. Thanks.

Member Avatar for harro

Hi,
Further to the above. I have now solved the problem. In my previous posts I omitted to mention that the drive was partitioned. I tried installing new ram as sugested by Cugan_77 but had no luck. I found a post here
which discussed problems formatting partitioned discs.
I then removed the partition using Partition Magic and the install then went without a hitch.
I have previously never had a problem doing a clean install on a partition, but I suppose there is always a first time.
Anyway I learned a valuable lesson, and many thanks for taking the time to help me.

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