Hang During Install

**JJDetroit** · 2008-05-22 18:28

I've got a frriend's PC that I'm attempting to upgrade to Win2K from Win98SE. It's in a Gateway2000 case, but I'm not sure if it's the original Gateway mobo or not. Got a PII-MMX processor, with 320 MB of RAM. Pulled an IBM Deskstar HDD from another PC, set it up as Slave. Was originally going to clone the Win98 installation over to the new HDD, then do the OS upgrade, but couldn't find a cloning program that would run on Win98. So I started the Win2K install (booting from the CD) and got a BSOD. It talked about disabling any form of memory caching in the BIOS, so I did that. No BSOD on second attempt, but installation stopped cold in middle. No error messages of any kind.

Started over, trying to install direclty on the IBM HDD. Installation gets as far as the GUI window saying "Starting Windows," with the blue line near the bottom of the window and the little set of boxes that normally fill from left to right. Nothing happens at that point, no matter how long I wait. Pulled the original HDD, set the IBM as Master, and started again. Exact same hang at same place. Any idea what the problem might be?

***JoeP517*** · 2008-05-22 18:45

Windows 2000 has always been picky about hardware support. Are you sure that it supports all the hardware?

Joe

**JJDetroit** · 2008-05-22 23:34

>> Windows 2000 has always been picky about hardware support. Are you sure that it supports all the hardware? <<

Must have been something in the BIOS/mobo that it didn't like. I went back and looked at the PC I pulled the the IBM hard drive from: it was a Gateway with an AMD Athlon processor, about 3 times as fast as the one I was trying to upgrade. Put the hard drive back in the Athlon PC, and the install of Win2K flew through to completion in less than 20 minutes. The PII is going to the scrap heap <grin>.

***JoeP517*** · 2008-05-23 15:15

Glad you figured it out. Thanks for posting back.

Joe

**JJDetroit** · 2008-05-23 15:24

>> Glad you figured it out. <<

Don't I wish

Today the "new" Gateway has started either freezing during boot, or rebooting on its own. I'm about ready to die, myself <grin>.

***JoeP517*** · 2008-05-23 15:33

Well, that could be a power issue or a RAM problem or a disk problem or ???? Seems like that PC is about shot.

Joe

**JJDetroit** · 2008-05-23 16:31

>> Seems like that PC is about shot. <<

I'm not out of parts to try, yet <grin>. Got a spare PSU and mobo laying around.

Thread: Hang During Install

Thread Tools