Laptop Hangs on Installation of XP SP2

[MattyWilson]

Hello,

I've got a Novatech laptop here (Model: NNB-215H) which I believe is based ont he Mitac 8599 Chassis.

Whenever I install XP Service Pack 2, the laptop hangs on re-boot on the loading screen (the scroll bar stops moving indefinately). I have tried various conitations of installations, such as XP + SP1 + SP2 and a straight installation of XP (with SP2 slipstreamed) none of which work. Everything is OK up until the reboot after SP2.

I have made sure that the bios has the most up-to-date versions from the Mitac Support site, which as far as I can see are currently:
BIOS: R1.04B
KBC: R1.05

I have also tried all the other usual diagnostics, disk, memmory and processor checks.

Has anyone heard of this happening before with this model and if so did you find a solution?

[Taxation]

this happened to me but on my desktop, you may have installed it incorrectly.i had to install mine twice
but then it worked

[MattyWilson]

It has done this continually after about 5 installs

[Taxation]

did you have an OS on it before you installed the new one.
try and format your hard drive/ get a new hard drive and try again

[MattyWilson]

The Hard drive has been formated various times - including using NTFS and FAT32, and then checked for consisitency (which reports no problems)

I can get it to install XP and sp1 fine and everything runs OK, it just upgrading to SP2 which causes problems - i'm convinced that its some sort of hardware conflict - but wanted to check wether the novatech guys have heard of it before. If not that that's fine - I will just return the unit to the customer and advise them never to install SP2 just the critical updates.

[Coops]

This was a common issue that was around with a few units at the time of release of SP2 and was something we saw a lot of at the time.

This issue should have been solved with BIOS update but i will need to check when i am back in the office what the latest BIOS for the 8599 is that we have.
In the mean time there is something else you can try as Microsoft also released a fix for this issue if this issue is THE one i believe it might be which is the conflict between P4 / CeleronD and SP2

The long winded way is to Install RTM or SP1 version of Windows XP

Then Download and install the following patch.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9b99c199-5d75-454f-ae07-b620727be8d8&displaylang=en)

When this is done, now install SP2. If this is the bug i think it might be then this should now solve the issue. If it does not come back to us and we can look at other possible cause.

[Coops]

Please find link to download BIOS R1.06 for Mitac 8599 Chassis if you wish to try this

http://forum.novatech.co.uk/files/8599_106.zip

Please do not undertake BIOS flashing if you are unsure how to do them or do not feel confident doing them as failure to do this correctly can leave your unit in a non functioning state.

BIOS Flashing is done at customers own risk. Novatech can take no responsibility for any damaged caused by failed flash.

[MattyWilson]

Hi,

Thanks for your prompt reply. :)

I've updated the BIOS to the version provided, however it still doesn't allow a fresh install of XP slipstreamed with SP2.

The Hotfix from Microsoft however works a treat and I have succesfully installed SP2 over an install of XP updated with SP1. So if anyone encounters this problem, check out the link above - it's got some usefull information on recovering your system if you install SP2 before the hotfix.

Thanks for all your help.