Hanging/No progress on XP reinstall.

Evol

Evol

Evol

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4 Jan 2009
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18
OK, hi! I apologize in advance for the wall of text..

You guys have been incredibly helpful in the past when I have needed help, unfortunately I cannot remember my old account information or recover it since the email i registered with no long exists. Hopefully I can find some help here again!!!

After experiencing constant crashes and hangs while using my PC over the last few days, and toying with the idea of a format, today I booted to find the "system has recovered from a serious error" screen, where it prompts you to choose between safe mode, normal mode etc etc. After choosing normal,,,AND safe mode it tells me the system cannot be started because the file "/windows/system32/system" is missing. No idea why this has happened, but it is the final straw and the idea of a fresh harddrive sounds quite nice anyway.

Now for the real problem:

This format business is nothing new to me as I have this rig for 5+ years and have formatted successfully several times in the past, however this time, doing everything in the same way, after asking me wether I want to repair or just install, and agreeing to the user license, it hangs with the message at the bottom of the screen "Searching for previous versions of Microsoft Windows".

Have left it to it for the last hour, thinking maybe it is just being exceptionally slow this time, but nothing is happening at all. What is wrong and what can I do to fix this?!

Last point, I have tried to just repair the system, using the same process as above, however when I choose the partition upon prompt (number 1, the only one on my system), again the PC hangs and nothing happens. The only option is to cold restart the computer.

Any advice or solution is greatly appreciated.
 
ok, are you using SATA or IDE? try just making sure that you have only one HDD plugged into the motherboard and making sure that this is plugged into the lowest value SATA connection on your motherboard, then try again and let us know how it goes..

Stelly
 
Stelly said:
ok, are you using SATA or IDE? try just making sure that you have only one HDD plugged into the motherboard and making sure that this is plugged into the lowest value SATA connection on your motherboard, then try again and let us know how it goes..

Stelly
Click to expand...

SATA i believe. I have never touched any connections on my Mobo other than when I replaced my graphics card and RAM about a year ago. I have only 1 harddrive and have never changed any of its connections to anywhere on the motherboard.

I will go check anyway.
 
Only ever had this problem once and it was a bad stick of RAM. Got to various stages of the install on each attempt and was a bit misleading as it gave messages saying that it couldn't read the CD.
 
Well i'm guessing since in the repair console, it has found your partition it has picked up the controller drivers, it may still be worth sticking them onto a floppy and hitting F6 when the XP disc first starts loading the drivers...
 
BarKeep said:
Full Specs & age of HDD?
Click to expand...
Apologies if these arent the full specs, I cant use any progs to check the full specs as my PC will not boot, so I have it in my lap right now.

Reading straight from it:

Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9

160GB SATA/150 HDD

Manufacturing date is 15th March 2004

I have owned it since late 04, and used it pretty much everday since.
 
Liquidfox said:
Well i'm guessing since in the repair console, it has found your partition it has picked up the controller drivers, it may still be worth sticking them onto a floppy and hitting F6 when the XP disc first starts loading the drivers...
Click to expand...

I have to do this anyway whenever I format. I have a floppy disk of HDD drivers which have to be used else a format is not possible.
 
This is partly a bump, but also an update.

I have been referred a prog called Delpart, which I am going to put on a floppy and boot from that, which apparently will destroy the partition with XP on. Has anyone used this or heard of it before?

If It does delete the partition, what will be different when I go to install XP on the clean HDD? Will it still check for previous versions of windows?

The above questions also apply to if I go and buy a new HDD, which I will be doing tomorrow should this Delpart not work. Should it be a smooth install of XP on the new harddrive?
 
Well if it were me I'd want to check the hard drive doesn't have problems first. Sounds like the XP install found an existing installation but it's corrupt and it's just struggling with that. May indicate your disk has read errors. If you can, grab the Maxtor disk utilites program (http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools) and run a test on the drive. If it's OK, remove the partition and leave it blank (let XP create a new one for you). If the disk is faulty of course you'll need to replace it.
 
I would just replace it with a new HDD. I have always had bad experiences with Maxtor so would never buy one again. Reinstall XP on your new HDD and stick the Maxtor in as a secondary drive and see what you can personal data you can recover from it through normal explorer.
 
Yes I would try some of the tools provided on the website of the HDD manufacturer before replacing the HDD :)

Stelly
 
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