Windows XP Install Problem

Hammer100 · 3 Aug 2011 at 10:38

Hi,
Have a Toshiba laptop that we reinstalled with XP Home Edition but after a few months the OS was stuck in classic mode. After a bit of digging around it turned out to be a virus that had done this and we couldnt get it back to normal XP display so decided to reinstall again. During the Windows Setup it kept asking for the Service Pack 1 disc even though the XP disc has SP1 built in (says it on the front of disc). Thought it may be the disc so made a copy and tried that but still same problem. I have borrowed a Windows Professional disc with SP2 from a friend and now during setup we get asked for the disc with SP2.

Anyone had this problem? I have had a hunt around and tried to find an answer but not had any joy with some of the possible fixes. One said to hit Shift & F10 and type mscdex.exe in command prompt to activate the CD drivers in case the drivers are not loaded or something but still same problem.

Sin_Chase · 3 Aug 2011 at 10:41

Are you rebuilding DIRECTLY from the XP CD or are you using (Toshiba) recovery partition/CDs.

Use the Windows XP CD directly, if it's the XP Key provided with the laptop you wish to use then it will be OEM and not retail. As such you will need OEM XP media, possibly of the same Service Pack level that the OEM Key was for.

Hammer100 · 3 Aug 2011 at 11:46

Hi mate, thanks for replying. I am using the Win CD and not recovery discs but i think i found the problem. I removed the memory in the machine and replaced with another dimm i had and the install seems to be going through now. I remember reading somewhere that bad memory could cause a similar problem and may be the case here.

Hammer100 · 3 Aug 2011 at 13:01

Bugger another glitch. The PC finished loading windows then restarted and now its stuck on a black screen with Windows XP logo, please wait. The pointer is the hour glass and the touchpad is still responsive but am stuck on that screen

El_Watcher · 3 Aug 2011 at 15:09

Run memtest+ and a HDD diagnostic to check whether there are any faults with them.

Is the HDD a SATA drive or IDE? If it is SATA, there may be some additional drivers required to get it to work properly that needed to be loaded before Windows install (not likely as you got it working previously though).