Well folks, I think the thread title pretty much sums it up here...like I said, I just installed a new hitachi travelstar hd (identical to factory installed drive that crashed and burned) on my gateway laptop 7300gz ((Pentium 4 h.t.))
Not being a computer genius I was surprised at just how easy this is to do. Started her up an ran the full system recovery from disks, the new hard drive was working perfectly blinky light & all....then 20 minutes later it's finished and prompts me to do the restart, fine,
It gets to the point where it starts windows xp home edition setup(says your screen may flicker while it detects keyboard, mouse, et. al
Then, without any of the aforementioned flickering, it just freezes at 50%. I mean it HANGS, LOCKS_UP, whatever......no keyboard or mouse response, at this point,(even though the keys and mouse had been responsive seconds ago) so no ctrl-alt-dlt NOTHING!
Now before anyone responds with "I think it's your new drive!" let me assure you that's not the problem, remember, I ran a full system recovery on this new drive(actually did it FOUR TIMES NOW!) and the new drive is functioning perfectly.
What we have here is a windows setup issue or detect & install issue (simple --you will next tell me to unplug any & all peripherals) to which I will reply, "there is nothing but the power cord connected to it." AND because it is a laptop, I don't even have the option of unplugging keyboard & mouse temporarily.
I am runniing out of self help options here, have already tried f8 during startup to attampt safe mode. Well guess what?-you can't run windows in safe mode until windows is fully installed! dang! that's what the error msg. told me. What else is there? can I sneak my computer into work and risk crashing my employers network by tapping into their dsl network line and booting from the network?-would that even work at all?-would I get fired?-is their xp pro mainfarme going to somehow boot my xp home machine--why would it? why wouldn't it?
If nobody knows, then I can just take it somewhere, and would appreciate a suggestion there too.
Thanks in advance
