[geekstogouser]

Sorry its taken so long since my last post. I'm taking 5 classes in college and its been a busy day.

When I got home this afternoon the computer shows it as still being stuck at 33 minutes to completion since last night before I went to bed. This attempt was made after removing all non-essential hardware, which in this case means the network card and modem. I haven't tried disabling the embedded network support in the BIOS yet because I haven't had any breathing room to do much with it since yesterday.

It looks like we might need to try that parallel install idea after all. I'll try and pick up an extra HD as soon as I have the time, which unfortunately might not be until the weekend. If I can get away from school long enough to get one I'll post a message here asking how to get the parallel install started.

I'll try and check back here at least once a day to see if you post any comments about this or the attached setupapi.log file.
Note: Its been renamed to setupapi-0003.log to distinguish it from the others I've been doing file comparison routines on.
If I don't hear back from you, have a good week, and I'll try and post an update this weekend.
-Patrick

Attached Files

•  setupapi_0003.zip   12.76KB   143 downloads

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How much room do you have on the current drive? A parallel install will take less than 4 gigs and it would be preferable to install to the current partition.

It's still failing at exactly the same point. Why were you doing the repair install? Maybe knowing that will shed some light on the problem.

[wannabe1]

How much room do you have on the current drive? A parallel install will take less than 4 gigs and it would be preferable to install to the current partition.

It's still failing at exactly the same point. Why were you doing the repair install? Maybe knowing that will shed some light on the problem.

[geekstogouser]

After checking I have more space than I thought I did on the C: partition.
50,606,419,968 bytes free to be exact.

I was doing the repair because after the login screen but before the system tray finished populating with icons, Windows Explorer would always crash a few times. The crashes would typically unhook PeerGuardian2 by giving it an icon in the system tray but not allowing it to have a right click menu or a window of any kind to manipulate or bring to the foreground. If I killed PeerGuardian2, I would have to unload its drivers with a special program before I could restart it. Restarting it would crash windows Explorer and the whole fiasco would start all over again.

I was able to prove that PG2 was not the problem by completely uninstalling it and watching Windows Explorer crash a few times after a reboot. In other words Windows Explorer would crash regardless of PG2's presents however, starting PG2's seemed to aggravate the issue but having it seemed more fun than not having it. I reinstalled PG2 and left its window open before shutting the computer down as a work around that would allow me to interface with PG2's settings after the next reboot when windows explorer would crash.

The problem with Windows Explorer crashing began when I made an embarrassingly newbie mistake when installing Asian language support files on my computer. I installed the files, but then on step2 I was possessed by Murphy's law and decided to greedily select not just the Asian languages from the list but every language. I learned my lesson. This caused WinXP to throw a temper tantrum and intermittently show me a blue screen of death. So I uninstalled all the language support completely, rebooted and tried again. This time however I only selected the languages from the list that I would be needing or using. After that windows seemed to be working except for the fact that Windows Explorer would crash a few times after every login.

I troubleshot the problem on a few different tech support forums; but after shooting down all the things that might be causing such a strange symptom, each technician I worked with came to the same conclusion: I would need to do a repair or a complete reformat and fresh install. For a while we thought it might be a bad memory issue, but I ran extensive memory tests for 3 days straight and no problems were reported. I also ran virus, rootkit, spyware, spamware, malware, etc. scans in both safemode, normal mode, and online (Panda, Kaspersky, McAfee etc.) with no signs of any infections.

I was happy using my computer in its somewhat unstable state because I could work around the problem. Then I read that a WinXP repair could sometimes fix difficult or annoying issues without compromising software that was already installed and rooted in the system registry. I decided to give it a shot, and this is where we are today.

Sorry for such a long post. I wanted to be thorough in my answer for the sake of clarity.
Questions: Are we at a point where we should try a Parallel install? Should I try disabling the embedded network support on the BIOS first?

It's getting late here on the west coast so I might have to bail out until after school tomorrow.
Thanks for helping.
Sincerely
Patrick

Edited by geekstogouser, 26 November 2007 - 10:12 PM.

[geekstogouser]

I haven't gotten a reply. Should I start a new thread?

[wannabe1]

Let's see if we can get a parallel install to go all the way through.

Boot to the Windows XP installation cd by pressing a key when the "Press any key to boot from cd" prompt appears at the top of the screen.

• At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press Enter to set up Windows XP.
• Accept the License Agreement by pressing F8
• With your current installation selected in the box, press Esc
• Select C: Partition1 [NTFS] in the box and press Enter
• To continue setup using this partition, press C
• Now you should see formatting options...choose the last one, Leave the current file system intact (no changes), and press Enter
• To use a different folder, press Esc
• Name the folder WINDOWS0 (just type a 0 (zero)) and press Enter

The Windows installation should begin. This will install Windows to a new folder, leaving your data intact. Any programs installed on the old directory will have to be reinstalled to the new one. Device drivers will also have to be installed for all the hardware to work as it should.

Your data will be located in the Documents and Settings folder (C:\Documents and Settings) under your old user account name...so when you set up the new installation, give yourself a slightly different user account name.

[geekstogouser]

I'm posting an image of the computer screen.
Your instructions say to select "C: Partition1 [NTFS]".
Should I select "C: Partition2 (Local Disk) [NTFS]" instead?

Edited by geekstogouser, 02 December 2007 - 04:38 PM.

[geekstogouser]

Would it be faster to just backup all the files on this drive to another partition, reformat this one and reinstall a fresh copy of XP?
Also, I'm considering installing some flavor of Linux. Would a dual boot system make me more vulnerable to viruses that hide in the Master Boot Record?

If I backup the C: drive and do a fresh install, would it be possible to migrate the desktop and appearance settings from the old install to the new one? In other words how much did the earlier failed recovery overwrite? Just curious.

I haven't received a reply in about 7 days. Are you ok? Should I be concerned?
If your to busy, is there a way to get this issue transfered to another technician?
Again thanks for all your help so far. You've been extremely patient and I really appreciate all the help you've offered.
Thanks.
-Patrick

Edited by geekstogouser, 09 December 2007 - 06:24 PM.

[geekstogouser]

The parallel install did not work. It also froze at 33 minutes.

I deleted the C: partition, reformatted and installed a fresh copy of WinXP. Everything is back to square one. Currently finalizing security measures and performing necessary system backups.

Closing notes:
The install programs on most of my CD's seem to crash while trying to install. I think I might have a faulty CD drive or the copies of my install CD's are getting to old and need to be re-burned.

I realize that something must have come up that kept you from being able to finish helping me with this issue. In any case, thank you for helping me as much as you were able to. I really appreciate all your hard work and time spent. It was a pleasure working with you. Thank you.

I'm considering this thread completed and this issue closed.
Sincerely,
Patrick

Edited by geekstogouser, 11 December 2007 - 05:41 PM.