Installing XP on ancient computer problem :(

Hi guys, Ive been trying without success to install windows xp sp2 on an old P3 computer, it previously had win98 on it and seemed to work fine.
I formatted the drive and went on with the install, it works fine until it get to 7 minutes when its supposed to be saving the setting,only the screen goes either blue or a weird pattern, cant move anything,keyboard wont respond, taking the CD out doesn't help, I left it like that for hours and nothing. Ive tried it now about 8 times and it always gets stuck at the exact same place, Ive taken out everything but the essentials,reformatted and tried everything.
Im guessing it would be either the installation CD or the HD, maybe the RAM ? Any ideas???

Thanks.

 

All those things plus potential overheating and poor PSU.

All you can do is go through them one at a time.

 

What is the CPU speed and how much RAM?
I have an older IBM (at least 12 years old) with 378MB RAM and a 728MHz P3 CPU running XP Home SP2.
Slow but working.

 

One stick of 128Mb SDRAM and a P3 733 or in the ballpark. Unfortunately I have only this old comp as is and a laptop but no spare parts, nor would I consider getting for such an antiquity. Is there a way to troubleshoot this without replacing the parts?

 

Hi there,

This maybe a random option...

But if you can install the same xp on another pc's hardrive, or external drive and then ghost / image this to the laptop. Then perhaps try a repair install you may work around the install issue??

I could be wrong, but it might be an option.. Also check to see if you Hard drive is reporting its correct size. Have you scanned for bad sectors etc...


Another option is to reinstall windows 98, once thats installed put in the Xp disc.
If auto run is enabled windows may detect a "newer version of windows"... follow the prompts..dont forget to uncheck the box for keep the old win 98 files to save space. You may also have to reformat the drive to fat 32? to take win 98.

These are only a suggestion's and may not work??



Good luck

 

Ive actually booted the win98 boot CD and did some fdisk some format and then installed the XP on the FAT32 partition created with the win98 CD and for some reason it installed it all the way even though it wouldn't when I tried with the FAT32 the XP installation creates... go figure.
Thanks guys !

 

Possible that an older machine couldn't work with NTFS format?

 

Here's something for you to read.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307881

 

Cheers Ill try to convert to NTFS later, but the funny part is that Ive tried with the FAT32 the XP CD creates and it still wouldn't work, but somehow did with the WIN98 one

 

Ok so I installed sp3 and converted to NTFS without a problem,altho it seems to run slower than on FAT32. I'm still not sure what was causing the issue but to be honest Ive given this wayyy to much time already, thanks to all who helped.