XP Setup Freezes during formatting!

[joshpreston]

Hey everyone,

I've got a weird problem I've never encountered before. I am reformatting and reinstalling Win XP on my friend's laptop for him, just to give it a fresh start, and everytime I start the formatting process it freezes at 23%. I Have no idea where to start on this one. I've tried a couple dif copies of Windows lying around... Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,
Josh

 

[gavinseabrook]

Did you do a quick or full format of the hard drive?

 

[raybay]

Did you start from a cold boot after a reboot? That is the way to go.
Do you have a floppy drive so you can do a repartition and reformat with a Windows 98 or MS-Dos floppy first.

 

[joshpreston]

I tried Full format, eventually I tried Quick and it worked, but it still freees on full at 23% everytime.

 

[raybay]

It appears you may have a bad hard drive. How old is it? Did other disasters occur that made you want to do the reformat?

 

[joshpreston]

I don't know, it's not my computer. It was just running so slow that it literally took 15 minutes to boot up. So I jsut wanted to wipe it clean and restart, which I did using the Quick format and it seems to have worked fine...but you think there could be trouble down the road if it is a bad hard drive?

 

[raybay]

Based on what you have told us so far, it could be anything. I always suspect infestations of spyware, adware, and viruses first.
But your symptoms are typical of a bad hard drive, or a damaged-dirty install disc. Hard drives are currently very inexpensive and easy to install.