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XP HOME CLEAN INSTALL LOOP !

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by tommyriggs

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HELP !! I have a compaq presario 1303 wm with an AMD processor.
I had a hard drive crash do to over load I think.
I installed the drive in another machine as slave and saved my precious files.
I then repartitioned and reformatted the drive and attempted a clean installation of xp home. But the installation would not complete. It would run throught the first part of the process, past formatting then setup begins to copy files , so far so good, right.

NOW : When the installation comes to the point of the first reboot, it shuts down, reboots , and LOOPS BACK to the very begining of the process instead of loading the GUI portion of the process.(It does this no matter what I change or replace.)

SO I thought it was a physical damage on the drives back up partition, I then purchased the restore CD's from HP and they LOOPED AS WELL

NOW: I purchased a NEW 250 GB HArd drive and attempted to a clean install on it. I GOT THE SAME LOOP !! ( then because of all the reboots , tweaking and what not my BIOS BECAMe CURRUPT!)
SO NOW I have purchased and installed a NEW MOTHER BAORD !!

SO AT THIS POINT: I have a new hard drive, new mother board, new copy of windows xp (licensed , packaged, and easily installed on a different machine).512 mb of ddr ram,
AND I STLL GET THE SAME LOOP WHILE TRYING TO INSTALL THE ***** OPERATING SYSTEM !
I am fairly sure my power supply, and memory modules are fine. (one module is old , but the other is a couple months new, both are 256 mb ddr 2700, I have tested them by pulling one out and alternating them them in slot one, STILL THE LOOP)

I have tried recovery console , FIX MBR , FIX BOOT ,
STILL THE LOOP.

SO is it safe to assume that my CPU (which is an AMD ) is over heating? But all my fans are working fine and the case is open .

WHAT THE HELL ?
PLEASE HELP ME SOMEONE. !!!

I have exhausted all my resourcs on this one short of buying a new cpu.

THANKS IN ADVANCE.

PS:
(I did read one post somewhere that XP sp3 and AMD had a bug that required changing a particular line in boot.ini and I did that on the old drive . But with a claen installation of xp home sp1 that should not be a issue yet, RIGHT ? )

edit: I just learned that the disk I have is actually xp home servcie pack 3 and there fore requires a fix from either microsoft or hp in order to be compatable with amd athlon cpu's
SO now I have to figure out how to downlaod this fix without having a floppy drive
intsalled in the machine in question. I do have a floppy drive here , maybe hp included drivers for a standard floppy drive, if I am lucky.

I will keep every one posted as to the results of this fix.

thanks

8 replies

by tommyriggs

Yes the new mother baord is exaclty as the old except for updated bios ( which makes my ne wrestore cds useless to me) But the mother board specs call for ddr 2700 (which I researched at HP ) and is what I have installed, however I think they are different manufacturers, BUt they worked together in the machine before the initial hard drive crash several months ago.

by seanferd

"I have tested them by pulling one out and alternating them them in slot one"

This is by no means any kind of memory test.
http://www.memtest.org/
http://www.memtest86.com/
http://hcidesign.com/memtest/
http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

Have you tried the HP CDs with the new drive? The retail XP is probably missing necessary drivers.

Tried different drive cables?

You are sure the PSU is fine, how?

Your BIOS configuration went bad so you bought a new motherboard?

What exactly did the original HDD crash look like?

edit:

Is the new drive registered in BIOS at its full size?

More than you want to know about your system:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=447312&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us&submit=Go ?

by tommyriggs

THANKS FOR RESPONDING

I Have tried the HP CDs with the new drive with the old mother baord and they looped as well .

I did try different IDE cables with the same results.

The bios becam currupt to the point that the bios and boot menu would not load , plus the housing for the CMOS battery was loose and unstable on the bard as it sits in an upright position ( very pecarious if you ask me) so I decided to get the new mother board

THe old drive crashed over a period of time, it was close to it's max capacity, . I had a blue screen error one day upon boot and was prompted to run chkdsk which I did , the chk dsk forrs during stage 2 and stayed frozen for over 24 hours, task manager would not launch, which forced a hard reboot, every time Ibooted I was meet with the blue screen that suggested chkdsk and every time chkdsk would freeze at the same point, I decided to install the drive in another compaq as a slave and run chkdsk , and chk dsk frooze here as well, even for mrecovery console it wuold freeze. Eventually the machine would not boot at all so Idecided to do a clean istall since the drive was maxed out any way , this is when the looping began ,

THe new drive is registred in bios with its full size 250 gb and I tried changing the access mode to support large disk just in case, and I still get the loop .

( I did read somewhere that in order for xp sp 3 to work with amd the boot.ini had to be modified, but I think the disk I have is pre sp3 it says version 2002 and does not mention a service pack on the packaging at all. ) I am currnetly trying to relocate this info.

by purpleskys

Tommy sent this response to me by email...i'm not much good with hardware, so maybe someone else understands this..

Yes the new mother baord is exaclty as the old except for updated bios ( which makes my ne wrestore cds useless to me) But the mother board specs call for ddr 2700 (which I researched at HP ) and is what I have installed, however I think they are different manufacturers, BUt they worked together in the machine before the initial hard drive crash several months ago.

I have just learned that the cd I have is in fact xp home sp 3 and there for requires a fix from microsoft or hp in order to work with the amd athlon processor in the system , now I have to instal a floppy dirve in the machine without an operating system.
Downlaod the fiels , uplaod the fiels , etc, etc, and hope that it fiaxes the issue, as you may imagine this has become aggrevating and expesive.

NOw that think of it this all may have started after installing sp 3 on the previous drive, in that case this is micorsoft or HP's fault and they owe me a new system!!!!??? if the fix doesn't correct it I will be contacting someone.

thanks

by santeewelding

Among variables I see here is you.

Is there, perchance, a point in the install where you are prompted to push "any key" to continue with the install?

If that is what you have been doing -- don't. Leave it be.

by tommyriggs

thanks for the response, there has been no prompt to coninue set up , furthermore there is never a prompt to boot from cd when boot priority is set as hard drive, I have tried it both ways . The setup files are loaded into the set up folder fine, then it will reboot, and when it restsarts it automatically goes back to the begginging, I have watched to process intently each time and there is never a prompt for any thing, except of course for third party raid drivers, but that is not applicable here.

The restore disk also looped, and that is what put me over the edge, I have to much money and time invested in this to just drop it, at this point the only thing on the system I have not replaced is the CPU , and that is next.

by seanferd

The required information is right at the HP site for that system. As a matter of fact, a link lives on the right sidebar exactly for this on at least a couple of the general support pages.**

I suggest editing boot.ini accordingly, then proceed with the install. you could do this from the Recovery Console, or with a live CD like UBCD. Or even by slaving the drive to another computer.

The RAM from 2 different vendors can cause problems, although sometimes there really isn't an issue until the RAM gets older. Sometimes it is never an issue. It depends on the RAM and the system.

**On the page I linked to, under ! Alerts for this product.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01457284&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=447312&lang=en

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