Posts by slyorca65

😛
After about yy attempts, the processor finally kicked the bucket—probably just been faulty from the start, I suppose—so I eventually stumbled upon a rather straightforward fix. I went ahead and picked up a new motherboard and a fresh CPU (not an Intel one, mind you), and now, predictably, everything seems to be running smoothly again.
My sincere thanks to everyone for the help!

Look, you don't honestly think I’ve just spent the last three days disabling Intel and sitting there with my arms crossed, staring blankly at a trash can—of course I'm actually trying to pinpoint the root cause here.
I can't exactly document every single microscopic step I take, otherwise this thread would turn into a damn novel... So, moving on...

I went ahead and disabled the ACPI function in the BIOS, but—honestly—it didn't change a thing. It seems like there’s just no chance of things thawing out before summer hits this year!

There was even a time when a mere 1% chance would suffice—just taking those three RAM sticks and pairing them up one by one in each of the three slots, without making any other changes at all!

Benjamin King2, Benjamin King2, have you actually been following this thread from the very beginning?

I’ve already tried all of that—removing the battery from the motherboard and performing a full NTFS format—but I’m still seeing absolutely zero progress.

Of course it isn't the same—that was merely a quick test to verify the integrity of the installation CD and the hard drive!

In my initial post, I mentioned that I actually moved this exact same hard drive over to a different machine and successfully installed Windows XP from that very same disc—so, I suppose, we can rule out any issues with the installation media itself.

The CD drive and the burner aren't responding either—though I suppose I did swap those components out just a little while ago.

Even with the BIOS ChipAwayVirus on Guard set to Disabled... it’s the exact same issue.

Thanks for getting back to me!
None of those suggestions worked—I tried running the installation from a different drive, swapped out the cables, and messed around with the memory too. I have three slots (two at 256MB and one at 128MB) and I've cycled through just about every combination imaginable, but it keeps hanging right at "Setup is starting Windows."
At this point, I don't think there's anything left to pull out of this machine besides the hard drive and the graphics card before I just call it a night!

I've been wrestling with installing Windows XP SP2 for a few days now, and it keeps freezing at the exact same spot. After spinning up the installation CD and watching all those files load, it hits that first menu and just dies right when it says "Setup is starting Windows." I should mention—this machine ran Windows XP perfectly fine for about four years without a single hiccup. I think I might have messed things up by swapping out some components from another PC; I put everything back exactly how it was once I was done, but the OS is acting possessed now.
MBO KD7E KT333, AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53 GHz Socket A, 640 MB DDR 266 MHz, Seagate Hard Drive 40GB, Nvidia GeForce2MX400 64 MB.

I've tried installing Windows 2000, Me, 98, and even 95, and they all eventually freeze up somewhere along the line.
As a test, I successfully installed MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. I actually moved the drive to a different computer, formatted it, and then—using that very same installation disc—installed Windows XP SP2 without any issues whatsoever.
When I move the drive back to the problematic machine, it gives me the option to boot into Safe Mode. I try selecting Safe Mode, but as soon as it starts listing the files, it freezes again.
I’ve poked around the BIOS (Award v3.1 LCP) trying to find the culprit, but no luck there. I even went as far as flashing the latest version, kd7_v39, but that didn't change a thing.
I'm honestly running out of ideas here—maybe someone else has run into something similar? Any help would be appreciated.