Trouble installing Windows on a new HD.

[Lekki_Sheep]

Might seem crazy to some of you, but I've had problems completing XP installs when booting from CD. I found using the XP boot disks which may be found on the XP homepage for download fixed the problem. It's been a while though, so I'm not absalutely sure what the problems I was having were. They may have been the same, though it's a vague reccolection and I may be wrong. It can't hurt to give it a shot. You'll need a floppy drive for it though.

LiquidLen, not wishing to cause offence, but I fail to see how necessitating restore disks to install a functioning OS on a laptop can in any way benefit a company, save in two cases:

1. Said restore disks must be purchased back from the company if they're lost, or if the end user bought their machine from some unscrupulous high-street chain store (PC World - Why in the world).
2. Said company has an agreement with Microsoft to make it nigh on impossible to install a non-windows OS like Linux.
This is HP we're talking about, not Fujitsu, or some other bargain basement camera manufacturer who's got a few chips from Intel and stuck them in nice packaging. They may (like all large businesses) be less than scrupulous, but they have a large number of business and pro customers who might not take to kindly to such practices and would find themselves competing with apple.

Also, just one more thing. As I have experienced trouble booting with USB drives (bar floppy drives that is) I can sympathise, but the symptoms KateyLou describes don't suggest that.

 

[Liquidlen]

Lekki...
I am not easily offended;
I can think of a lot of reasons why Manufacturer's INSIST upon their Setup programs being installed.The main reason is......
$$$$$$$$$$$
One of the largest after Sale Costs to them is Tech support/Warranty. Standardizing Installs and limiting what end users can customize on LTPs saves them a ton of money.
As for Linux; I doubt if Manufacturers care if you want to TRY and load it on their LTP's, go ask the boys here at the Alternate Forum. You would have to be a very good Power user capable of writing a lot of software to pull it off successfully.
Linux portables have just started hitting the market from companies as a reaction to It's(linux) increase in popularity. BTW these LTPs have a setup program also.
The bottom line is that these Setup programs are Built in and they ultimately make it simpler to own and operate LTPs.You can load an O/S without them ,but not without difficulties.
Why bother?

 

[Silver Wraith]

All you guys have missed the point here. I will tell you what has actually happened, how it happened, and what is now happening. In going in to remove the hard drive, you have either not taken proper antistatic precautions, and your built up static travelled through the pc and damaged the RAM module or out of curiousity you actually touched or removed the ram. Either way static damage.

It is very easy to assumed because you are having read or write errors it has anything to do with either of the drives. While you are loading windows, the cdrom is reading the files bloody fast, the hard drive is also writting very fast. But because the hard drive is writting not only the file, but also its registry entries, creating directories for the file, etc, it starts to lag behind the cdrom. But the cdrom does not stop for the hard drive, the computer sees this and starts putting the files into cache memory, which is actually made up of most of your RAM, because it is not being used for much hard computing at this time.

Now your problem starts here. The files have been written safely to cache. A temporary FAT table is created of the files in cache. The hard drive catches up at last. It reads the temporary FAT for the next file to write and the location of that file in cache. It looks for it but can't find it because either the FAT files is partially unreadable or the location is mis-written. Either way you get the error "Cannot Read File ????? from Cd" or Cannot Write ???? File".

So you are furiuosly reformatting your hard drive, buying new drives, or looking for new cds. All to no avail. The next time you try reloading, you get faults with a whole new set of files, because the errors are random with the faulty memory. Even if you end up finishing the install, it will start crashing all over the shop. When you installed via USB cdrom, you may get less errors because the data transfer rates via the USB is much slower than an imbedded cdrom in the ide channel. So the hard drive does not lag behind so much. You may only get a few files missing.

But your problem is still underlying. What you now have is an unreliable computer. Little errors here and there. The occasional hanging or taking too long to shut down. The odd rebooting while starting windows. Am I right or wrong?

Change the ram module. You can download a very small memory test programme and test the ram in a your computer. The ram will fail read/ write test. I ran a repair shop for 12 years.

 

[Lekki_Sheep]

RAM always seems to rear it's ugly head when you've got a bit of a chestnut. Hard to be sure from mem-tests that it's true though. If it comes out consistently clean then you should try replacing the RAM with a brand new stick. If it doesn't pass of course you know what's wrong. Regardless, please post an update on your progress here so we can see how it went.

 

[kateylou]

thanks everyone!

Dear Lekki Sheep and all ts helpers,

Alas life takes hold and the computer has been pushed to the back burner by pressing issues of family in poor health and many nights spent by a hospital bedside!

Silver has a point about static and I may try to download this ram checking software….

If / when I get to it…. I will let you guys know any outcome

I am ashamed to say I’m really ready for giving it to some friendly computer tech at my local who offered an exchange for a new dvd burner for this ol’ PC, he can then fix or dump it!

My knowledge has been expended through this ordeal but I am still not really up to speed.

Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that my questions and all of your subsequent answers may have helped another ts newbie out there too!