[scottb]

Hello,

hope you can help me.

I have a pc that keeps freezing when i try to re-install win xp pro. to cut a long story short this pc is my friends, he tried to do a repair install of xp. he ended up with a dual boot system on one drive his original xp and an xp repair setup option. niether of which worked. so i took his pc away an formatted the hard drive and tryed to re-install xp but on setup screen pc freezes. i've checked the hard drive using external caddy with nortons no errors, i've checked the memory using memtest86 memory passed. i downloaded a xp bootdisk reformatted the harddrive to fat 32 and copied setup files to harddrive from cd copied ok tried to run winnt.exe but same system freezes. i've also tried removing all pci cards (except graphics card) one at a time and running winnt.exe same thing happens. i only recieve 1 short beep on startup. could the problem be the cmos settings ? do you think he has screwed them up when he tried the repair ? or could the motherboard be on its way out.

can someone please me i'm beat on this one

don't want to do anytthing to the cmos without advise

thanks in advance

Not sure what forum to post this in so put it in both o/s forum and hardware forum

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Why are you not booting the system from the XP CD to install it, which is the accepted method for doing an XP install ??

[pip22]

Why are you not booting the system from the XP CD to install it, which is the accepted method for doing an XP install ??

[scottb]

hi pip22,

sorry should have said i did try doing this originally but the same outcome that is why i have tried what i have so far. Do you have any suggestions

[pip22]

One short BIOS beep means all hardware has passed POST okay --- that's what you should get. Have you tried using the special set of 6 floppy-disks
that are supplied as a download from Microsoft as an alternative method of installing XP? (this method is intended for old systems with no CD-boot option in the BIOS, but can still be used on more modern systems --- might be successful, you've nothing to lose).

http://support.micro...om/?kbid=310994


If still no go, FDISK the existing partition, create new partition and make it active. Then format, then try XP install.

[scottb]

Hi pip22,

thanks for that will try it to see if it works, so tell me if one short beep is what you are suppose to get i take it my theory of a problem with the motherboard is incorrect, as the one short beep indicates all hardware working ok.

will let you know how i get on

thanks

[pip22]

Correct. One short beep means mobo, keyboard, hard drives and RAM are all okay. Any problems with those would give a long beep, or a series of long/short beeps.

here's the rundown on various BIOS manufacturer's beep-codes.

http://www.amptron.c....beepcodes.html

Don't be misled by the the first beep listed in table 1 for AMI Bios. This refers to a LONG single beep, not a short one. All the BIOS makes have one thing in common: 1 short beep = hardware OK

[scottb]

Hi pip22,

thought i'd let you know got it sorted. it would appear the computer was trying to write the o/s to the card reader, this was how it was freezing up. didn't think of disconnecting the card reader when i was removing cards from mobo. was doing some research on the mobo on ebyuyer when i came across a post from someone else having the same problem. disconnected the card reader and away it went fully up and running now and friend vhappy

thanks for your input cheers