calling all rebuilders

Go to the hard drive manufacturer's site and get the disk utility for the drive. Run the tests in the utility. If the hard drive check out as not having any problems use the utility to completly zero the hard drive.

The CPU is a little lean for XP, but if you have a copy of ME think about installing it instead of 98 SE. ME has a better driver data base than 98 SE.

Sounds like either a bad hard drive or it just needs zero-ing out before installation.

With HP M'Boards I've only ever used the Recovery Cd's I've never actually used an OEM copy of Windows to load one up. There could be something in the BIOS preventing the use of any Cd's but the HP supplied ones.

All I can suggest is that you Flash the BIOS to the latest available if you know the model of the unit that the M'Board came out of.

You could also try a Live Nix install which runs off the CD just to make sure that there isn't some weird compatibility issues with the hardware. If it will run a Live Linux Cd and install that version of Linux to the HDD and work 98SE should be a breeze to install. But the operative word here is "Breeze!"

But try a Live Linux and see if that will boot up if it doesn't while all the hardware may be perfect it may not work together I had something similar recently on a new ABIT M'Board and a ATI Video Card each worked perfectly but not together. Although not so common now days it was fairly common way back in the good old DOS days. :D

Col

my guess is: *almost* compatible hard drive controller. iow, the onboard controller is not tranlating the geometry of the drive right. if you posted the exact drive model i could guess better.
if i am right, you would have this problem with ay os tho. the drive would check out fine but when you started using it you would get errors...
for a test, i would try a 4gb drive if i had one or a add in drive controller is only $25 approx

The first step I use when a system will not load Windows is to drop back to a minimum configuration.

Remove the NIC and any other plug-in cards.

Turn off all of the on-board peripherals.

Still problems, try different RAM.
I have run into several instances where known good RAM just did not function properly with a specific motherboard.

With a Celeron 400, all you need is PC66 RAM.
The motherboard likely only supports up to PC100 RAM.

Chas

I owned a Hewlett-Packard computer -- once! They are the most proprietary brand there is. Trying to install any version of Windows other than the original install CD is always a nightmare.

If I had to attempt what you're doing, my first step would be to visit the mainboard chipset maker, SiS, which offers a newer graphics driver than HP. http://www.sis.com/download/
Since you indicated video is onboard, pick IGP Graphics Drivers. Probably do the same for any other drivers that SiS offers for the 620 chipset, but I'm guessing it's video drivers that are causing your troubles. I would then adapt Step 3 of the following:
http://www.maximumpc.com/2005/01/how_to_slipstre.html
to include all your updated drivers, or at least video, and the rest should be possible once the OS is loaded. The more drivers you include in this modified install CD, the more variables you can eliminate as the source of your difficulty with this installation.

First, do what Chas recommended, with one possible exception. I believe Socket 370 Celeron 400 CPUs require PC100 memory instead of PC66.

The prevalent cause of problems similar to yours is faulty memory. Either swap memory with known good low density SDRAM (preferable) or test using memtest86+.

http://www.memtest.org/

Add comments to your question to let us know how things are going or if you need more information.

Dalton

Update.
shot the m/board.No, took it back, got another board and just finished loading everything,with the same ram,hhd,nic,31/2,cdrom,case,powerpack.
With other board, zeored out the hhd, reformated,used a 1.8,3,4,20g hhd,changed ram(use 66 and 100).pulled nic, changed nic. changed power supply(250W & 350W). Same problem, so I shot the mother. Thanks to all that replyed. If I ever see another HP board I'am headed for the hills.