XP hang after reinstall

[spikus]

I wonder if anyone can help me. I have an old Novatech laptop Model 8599 NNB-215
serial number70820130-009 S/N PNB408011496. looking at the setup screen it has -
Celeron 2800 CPU
512 MB RAM
30 GB hard drive - ATA 66/100
Samsung CDRW/DVD

I wanted to put a clean install of XP home on it for my daughter, and all went well until the reboot which forms part of the install when it hangs on the Windows flash screen. It scrolls across about three times then stops. I've tried leaving it, I've tried two versions of the XP Home CD - one with SP2, one without and get the same result.

I wondered if there may be a hardware issue, like the wrong drivers being loaded - but I don't think I need to press F6 at the start of the install as the disk is ATA and I don't have any driver disks anyway. The system was working OK (although very slowly) before the install, but just to test that everything was working I tried loading Linux Kubuntu, and that worked fine too.

One other thing which may or may not be relevant is that the BIOS seems to indicate that there is a WiFi facility installed, but this didn't show on the old XP system so I had to plug in a USB wifi stick to connect to my router.

Has anyone has similar experiences or any ideas for where I go from here - apart from switching to Linux that is.

Thanks

[djgandy]

Well the first step is to see if the system can still do anything.

Since you mentioned Linux it may well be worth downloading and running ubuntu from a CD. You do not have to install ubuntu, just stick the disk in, choose the run from Live CD option and go and make a cuppa. You can grab ubuntu from here http://www.ubuntu.com/

If this works, then you at least know your system fundamentals are OK.

It may also be worth running memtest from http://www.memtest.org/ This will test your machines memory to ensure that there are no errors with it.

Hanging on boot has a good chance of being memory or processor.

If both of those things work fine then we'll have to try some other things.

[spikus]

Thanks djgandy - yes I have tried Linux (Kubuntu) and it works fine - I will try the memtest,but if Linux works why should Windows not. Thanks - I will report back

[djgandy]

Well with faulty memory it could be a case of luck whereby a particular memory address is being used under windows during boot and causing a crash. This might not happen under Linux. That's a long shot though.

Did you run Kubuntu from your hard drive?

The only other thing I can suggest is some kind of CPU stress test, of course you'll need to run this under Linux.

If you have a working CPU, RAM and Hard drive, that only leaves the motherboard or a faulty device doing things it shouldn't.

Do you have any PCI cards in the system? It might be worth removing everything you can and also disabling every non essential onboard device you have through the BIOS.

[adirtymonkey]

Have you tried a safe mode start?

[spikus]

Right - progress (or otherwise) so far ....

Memtest ran OK - not conclusive but a good indication. I will open up the back and see if I have a spare stick of RAM in my scrap box of the same sort to try - but this will be as last resort.

Yes I did install and run Linux from the hard disk

The thing is a laptop so PCI cards not in evidence - no PCMIA cards either - nothing in any USB slot and the ethernet cable unplugged.

F8 gives the menu but safe mode produces same result - hang on splash screen.

What I may try is running linux from the CD then editing boot.ini on the hard drive to add a flag or two - /sos seems the one to start with and see if that helps identify the problem.

Thanks for your responses.

[adirtymonkey]

If you try safe with VGA support that might rule out any graphics issues.

[spikus]

Further exciting episodes -

Via live disk Linux, I edited boot.ini to add /sos flag. This produced a screen full of messages, much like those produced in safe mode boot, but they flashed down the screen and dissapeared before you could read anything - it then hung again, this time on a pale blue installation type of window listing the type od CPU and memory.

Thinking to catch these messages in a log file, I next used Linux to add the /bootlog flag. This resulted in the same quick list of mesages followed by the pale blue screen with the added line - bootlog started. Returning to Linux there was no log file to be found. I suspect the logging begins just before the hang and therefore has niohing to report - either that or it is somewhere else and I can't find it.

Next step - getting desperate

Since there is absolutely no disk activity (the little light does not even flicker) - I will boot from a System Rescue CD and run the fixmbr command - I'm thinking maybe it can't find the boot partition or the main bootable image.

After this the possibilities are - in no particular order -

1. see if I can swap the RAM stick for a similar one
2. change laptop the hard drive and install a fresh copy on that
3. might see if I have an old laptop hard drive with XP home on it and see if that will boot. Yes I know I am likely to get registration hassle from Microsoft but it we may prove something and it may be circumventable by re-activataion with the correct key (from the label on the case)
4. Use it as a Linux test laptop
5. Give up and get my daughter a nice refurbished Laptop from Laptops DIrect