Help can't install xp but can install 98

kjbits · 19 Sep 2006 at 22:16

Gigabyte 7VM333M-RZ motherboard, 2G AMD Athlon cpu, 256Mb and 128Mb sticks of memory. Several different harddrives tried.
I cant install XP. It goes through the blue windows setup screens gets to setup is starting windows but then freezes. But can install 98 ok with the same set up.
Any ideas as I am totally stuck have already searched the net to no avail.

Tesla · 19 Sep 2006 at 22:17

kjbits said:
Gigabyte 7VM333M-RZ motherboard, 2G AMD Athlon cpu, 256Mb and 128Mb sticks of memory. Several different harddrives tried.
I cant install XP. It goes through the blue windows setup screens gets to setup is starting windows but then freezes. But can install 98 ok with the same set up.
Any ideas as I am totally stuck have already searched the net to no avail.

Have you tested the following components:

Memory
CPU
Power Supply

?

kjbits · 19 Sep 2006 at 22:21

Only changed the memory and hard drive so far. If the setup works with 98 why not Xp?

stoofa · 20 Sep 2006 at 11:26

We had some old PC's at work which would take a Windows 98 install but wouldn't take a Windows 2000 one.
Most likely either hardware fault (Win2k/XP demands stable and reliable hardware and will detect faults lesser OS's don't because of this).
Or more likely BIOS revisions on the motherboard.

Chocki · 22 Sep 2006 at 16:39

I.ve had this before as well, what I did was slow the memory down (Timings), then install and set them back again.

To be honest that was ages ago and back then I never ran memtest etc.

Then I got the overclocking bug! :-)

kjbits · 22 Sep 2006 at 20:48

I've already updated the bios also the board had been running XP ok before with the same setup.

Velocity · 22 Sep 2006 at 21:00

Restore Bios defaults?

kjbits · 22 Sep 2006 at 21:15

Tried that plus every other possible setting

kjbits · 22 Sep 2006 at 22:41

any other ideas?????????????????????????????

rich_g85 · 22 Sep 2006 at 23:05

Looks like you have a stuck question mark key too.

Have you restored the BIOS failsafe defaults? XP is clearly not liking something- I would put it down to either something in your BIOS or duff memory. Take one of your RAM sticks out and run setup. If that fails, swap the sticks over and try again.

Are you absolutely sure it's frozen? How long do you wait before you give up on it?

Is all your hardware on the XP HCL?

Edinho · 23 Sep 2006 at 11:56

Are you sure you have the hard drive partitioned in FAT32 and not NTFS?

NTFS isnt supported in WIN98.

Forget that seen its the other way round. I'll call a taxi.

rich_g85 · 23 Sep 2006 at 13:52

Taxi for Edinho... edinho - is he here? He's left? Oh...

How you getting on kjbits? Any luck?

kjbits · 23 Sep 2006 at 18:01

Have tried restoring defaults, tried the harddrive in FAT32 and NTFS in fact think have tried everything.
But tried something new borrowed a harddrive from another pc with xp on and it booted ok.
But when try installing xp still gets stuck at starting windows screen. Have left it for up to 1 hour. still the same

philhoole · 23 Sep 2006 at 18:34

What graphics card do you have? Had this problem at work on 2 PCs with (I think) GF2MX cards. I put in another GPU for the installation and then put the GF2MXs back in after XP was fully installed and they worked fine.

kjbits · 23 Sep 2006 at 18:36

no card just on board graphics

kjbits · 25 Sep 2006 at 20:33

UPDATE

tried the harddrive from another pc running xp and it booted up ok.
So it looks like the only way I can install xp is by fitting the harddrive to the other pc install xp and then fit it to the original pc