Help XP Install took 3 days

[locovic]

First of all Hi all!!! I got this machine that has me in a riddle that I seem to not answer. It is a Dell Dimension 1100. Pentium 4, 2.8ghz, 512 ram, 250 gig hdd with two disk drives dvd and dvd writer. This pc came to me with a blue screen and after checking it I decided to put in a new hdd as the one in it was an 80gig and my friend needed a bigger one. I used a Seagate 250gig formated accordingly to dell's instructions. Using their debug method in clearing all in a disk. I used an original Dell xp install disk I have a few as I deal with a lot of them. The format went accordingly to schedule but as soon as it reached the copy of files it slowed down to almost to a total halt. Knowing that this problem is usually the memory I swapped with a new memory module but it did no difference it kept installing very slow. Since I like to troubleshoot I started with the minimal devices like dvd(Changed this to a Cd reader),Hdd(Used two new Hdds),mouse and keyboard. But to no avail it just keeps hanging. I checked the motherboard for any caps that might be leaking but the components were in tip top shape. I even changed the power supply just in case there was not enough power being administered to the motherboard but the problem was still there. Installed the most recent Bios trough DOS. Well finally I left the install continue for three days until it finished. But as expected it just runs tooo slowww and takes forever to read from the hdd (I used a second new Seagate 250gig drive just in case). The last step in troubleshooting was to swap the cpu and I did with a Celeron D and it worked fine but still ultra slow.
So if anyone has come upon this kind of problem can you please give a tip in how to resolve these? I know that most of you will say to change the motherboard but it is an Intel and it is expensive. Well thanks to all for reading this and any help is welcomed.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Have you tried replacing the data cables? Maybe the XP CD itself is defective, can you try another?

Sorry if you've mentioned those in your first post, I'm extremely sleep deprived and that block of text up there is like an optical illusion .

 

[locovic]

Sorry about that but this is my first post as I have never had this problem before and Yes I did swapped with other data cables. Thanks

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

...Okay and have you tried another XP CD?

 

[Nodsu]

Have you taken a look at various BIOS settings? Are the hard drives using DMA? Maybe you disabled the L2 cache?

 

[locovic]

Thank you all.

Thanks to all my friend decided to buy a new motherboard with a duo core it seems to cost less than expected. So I wiil trash this motherboard. Thanks again for your help.
P.s. I reseted the bios to default so I am sure L2 cache was enabled.

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

Hopefully, the Dell Dimension 1100 doesn't have one of those lame OEM front panel connectors that Dell is fond of using eh?

Good luck with the assembly and such.