Windows install freezes?
 

Ok, I have a friend who is trying to install Windows on his own custom built computer. It's got the following:

AMD Duron 1.1ghz
256mb pc133 RAM
40gb wd hd
32x cd-rom
geforce 4 mx

We'll boot from the cd and the install will start to copy files for installation. It'll do the usual and ask for a third party controller card, or other various hardware (which he has none of). But once it gets to the end of copying, where it should restart and go into the setup, it just freezes. After about 60 seconds of sitting at the blue setup screen, it just goes black. So I restart manually thinking it will start the setup, but it gives me an error about a missing file. It freezes in the same spot with Windows 2K, and Windows XP.

Any ideas?

Try booting from a dos disk and copying all files manually to the harddrive.
Install from there.
Win2k has given me trouble before and apparently that workaround fixed it.

But remember to enable smartdrv.exe (from the bootdisk) before copying, it goes about 10 times as fast. (well sort of).
And after copying, be sure to launch the correct .exe as the normal setup.exe will complain that you are running the wrong DOS version. At least for Win2k there is an exe somewhere on that CD that will install from a "Win98"DOS but I forget what it is called.

good luck!

i had that problem, i updated my bios to fix it

cant remember what caused it, but it worked

Same here.

-Lasereth

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I guess I need to find a new bios for the his board. I wasn't able to get Silvy's suggestion to work. Let me know if you guys come up with anything else.

I've seem installs of any OS fail because of bad ram or if the processor is overclocked. You might want to try checking into thse possibilities as well as updating the bios (note that i have had older versions of a bios work better then a newer version on an old k6-2 mobo).

Install linux, you'll never have Windows problems again :P

Be sure the bios has the hardirve set to auto-detect, I had the same problem until I set the bios to auto detect hard drive.

Can I help?
What failed?

Install Linux, and you'll never be able to play games again :P

-Lasereth

that's the truth. sure, you may be able to play them sooner or later, but not immediately. I hate having to scrounge around looking for compatible programs, also. definitely not worth it.

Well I did as you suggested. But the setup still wouldn't run. I didn't get any errors, just a blank screen. I though it might be a corrupt install disc, so I tried another copy from work. Same thing. Still freezes.