Setup is Starting Windows (xpbootcd) failure

Hello everyone. I am in desperate need of some help.

Problem: When I insert xp bootcd in and boot from it, it loads all the drivers up to the point of where it reads "Setup is starting Windows" in the lower left corner and freezes. This is right before the recovery/installation screen.

Things I have tried:

Tested Ram = good
Tested PSU = good
Tested CPU = good
Tested HD = good
Tested CD = good

Flashed BIOS to latest version

I have a bare system right now, as I have been trying to trouble shoot this problem. I have tried the original drive first, but since then, I have formatted a drive and tried using it. I am running a 2100+ with 1x256 Ram. Maxtor 60 gig drive, with a cd rom drive. Vid card = 9800 pro.

History: System was up and running, let a friend come over put some ram in, it errored out, was going to run memtest on it, came up bad. Put my Ram back in (known good by lan'ing all day long) and now it does this. At first, it black screened on me when trying to just start XP, then when trying to boot from safe mode, it locked right after it loaded mup.sys (which I cant disable, cuz I cant get to the recovery screen), then when using the Last Known Good Configuration, it black screened as well.

I spent 10 hours running virtually every tool on UBCD yesterday to only come up with that my hardware seems to be fine. By formatting a new drive and trying to install it, negated any registry/software conflicts. I built this machine from the ground up and have never seen/heard of any problems such as these. I have even flashed the bios, thinking it might be corrupt to no avail. I have tried underclocking both RAM and CPU even syncing them at 133. nothing at all.

If anyone has any help, please please please, I ask, help! I have read just about a thousand web pages on all sorts of problems regarding, and now I feel pretty much hopeless as I feel I have exhausted all measures of troubleshooting.

I look forward to any responses.

TIA~davesfx.

 

When you boot to the CD, and it says to press F6, tap F5 a few times and it will come up to a screen where you can choose a standard PC setting.

Choose that, and see what happens.

 

I have tried both of these options.

With F5 and F6 one is for HAL and the other is for ACPI ( i think) I have tried both of these options , but the one inclusive to this thread was:

"standard pc 486 with I step or C step"

I have also, gone ino the bios (at one time or another and) disabled ACPI, all USB, onboard sound and LAN.

hope this helps and thanks for the quick response.

 

At that point, I'd look into a BIOS update.

 

I just flashed the bios with the latest update. Any other ideas?

 

THis may sound lame, but clean the CD.

 

I will try that when I get home, I also negated to say that I have tried 3 different copies of xp to do this. 1 is my bought copy of xp home. 2 is a copy from Gateway, that works all the time with many keys, so I use this when working on other peoples computers and the other is a corporate that I got that is just for testing purposes right now. If I get any to work, I want to use my home copy.

 

If all do it, then you're back to a hardware issue.

 

To add to SPD's statement, that hardware issue is most likely to be the motherboard.

 

Well, I couldn't find a decent way to test the mobo...so I almost gave up. Then I came across a windows 98 cd. Long shot, but what the heck. It installs, fully, all the way up to the last update. Then I realized the bf2 was xp only... so back to my original problem. I tried upgrading and new installations from 98 to xp. Both failed same point, but windows98 will still boot just fine if I want to. How can a bad mobo install 98 and be stable... and why in the heck can I not get past that point when installing? very frustrating.

 

If 98 loads and XP doesn't, sounds like a BIOS issue. Take out the CMOS battery, leave it out for 10-15 minutes, then put it back in. Try loading XP with the BIOS defaults.

 

reset the cmos, still stalled at the same point.
flashed bios to previous version rather than latest, same problem.
copied entire contents of cd to harddrive and ran winnt from local i386 folder, locked up at the same point.

heck I even called microsotft yesterday morning they didn't have a clue, asked me to download the 6 floppy disks. did that and it gave me new light, well it still errored, but at least its a new error that I can hunt down.

file biosinfo.inf could not be loaded. error code 4096

any clues?