[tatt2oed]

Well, I formatted the hard drive. I am now trying to install xp pro. I have about the same problem as before.
when the computer boots it comes to the windows set up screen where it says "setup is starting windows"
It will not go past this. It seems it freezes at this point, upon numerous restarts, thats as far as it will go.
Any more ideas? I am at a loss!!
Thanks again to everyone for their input.
Scott

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How did you format the drive? Is this the one which contains Windows ? You can't format a system drive unless you move it to another computer or use another system drive.

If you can't install XP pro at this stage I would recommend 2 things:

1: take off the hard disk, install it as a slave on another computer, format it there and reinstall it back as a master (or cable select) on the original computer. To format it on the other computer click My Computer, Identify the new drive and right click on its icon. Choose format (NTFS, full format). I have seen a number of computers, including my son's new machine, in which this was the only way to enable a new installation of XP.

2: I would reset BIOS in the original computer to default values. After doing this make sure that your booting sequence starts with CDROM.

Place XP disk in the CDROM and follow the instructions carefully.

[The Skeptic]

How did you format the drive? Is this the one which contains Windows ? You can't format a system drive unless you move it to another computer or use another system drive.

If you can't install XP pro at this stage I would recommend 2 things:

1: take off the hard disk, install it as a slave on another computer, format it there and reinstall it back as a master (or cable select) on the original computer. To format it on the other computer click My Computer, Identify the new drive and right click on its icon. Choose format (NTFS, full format). I have seen a number of computers, including my son's new machine, in which this was the only way to enable a new installation of XP.

2: I would reset BIOS in the original computer to default values. After doing this make sure that your booting sequence starts with CDROM.

Place XP disk in the CDROM and follow the instructions carefully.

[Retired Tech]

You can format the hard drive in this PC, provided you boot from CD ROM using the XP CD, when it gets to the installation, click esc to install without repairing, press D to delete the existing partition, type L to confirm, press enter, leave it set to its default format, NTFS Long which will take about a minute per GB of hard drive size.

If this is the way you already did the format, look for the manufacturer's set up utility for the hard drive, check it has the option to write zeros to the drive, again, use the full option, which would take 8 hours for a 200GB Drive

You will be able to download it to any PC, save it to CDR and load it from there on to the PC you want to install XP on

Most hard drive utilities are ISO image files, if not, you would need to use Nero / Roxio to burn the file as an ISO image

You can also use UBCD which is an 121MB download, but has lots of utilities, several which will format the drive

http://ubcd.sourcefo...t/download.html