Win XP installing forever

I am helping my friend building new P4 pc. Everything went fine after boot on cd to install win xp, entered set up, format harddrive, installing. I am at installing devices, it said 34 mins to complete set up, but during installing devices, green banner move very slowly to end. It took a hour for 34 minutes to 33 minutes left during installing devices. I never see that and took me 20-30 mins to finish installing win xp on my AMD base. Its not freeze or anything like that but damn slow and adversiting about Window XP's new exciting looks kept adversiting about its features, lalala etc just fine. Since my friend is using P4 and I wonder if that has to do with ECC for cache L2 or something enabled in bios? Mastertech said I need to leave it enable but not sure if I can disable it only during installing win xp so Win XP can go faster to complete the damn set up then enable that bios back. It got too late for me to stay up all nite and I had to leave but plan coming back there tomorrow to finish setting up. I thought about turning it off tomorrow to reformat and reinstall win xp with ECC on CPU disable if it is still installing devices in morning. I never use built P4 system but I want to see if any of you P4 bases users to confirm if its normal or not. My friend have P4 2.4ghz, 512mb ram made by mushkin, Soyo SY-P4I-845PE LITE. Anyway, I have to get up early, I hope I have answers soon or I will of course turn it off while it installing then reboot to reformat and reinstall again with all these bios disabled to make it run like AMD base.

 

that's not normal one bit. I would take out all of the un-neccessary devices from your machine and try it again. Having ECC on or off should make no difference, though for a home machine you don't need ECC RAM. It's a waste and it's slower than non ECC RAM. I would check for bios updates for his motherboard, perhaps there is a known issue with that board and a BIOS update might fix it ... of course they usually tell you what fixes are in the BIOS updates and it's generally not necessary to update unless it states your problem. However, sometimes updating even if it doesn't state your problem works.. don't ask me why though.

 

Ah I had problem solved. I went back in bios and I changed auto on agp/pci bus speed to fixed with numbers. That was it, your right, it wasnt ECC as I first thought. I dunno why I had to change to fixed from auto as auto suppose to autodetect, oh well everything gone smooth, now I am into window and got in device manager notice two problem devices which is audio controller and SM Bus controller. I will do audio driver but I never see SM Bus controller before, whats that? anyone know? thanks

 

I found out what SM bus controller, it chipset driver for intel. I downloaded it from cd that came with board. I am learned couple of new things about Intel motherboard and Pentium 4 today. I finished set up my friend's pc today and it run great, I got paid for building it One question about win xp secondary logon user, if other user mess up drivers, settings etc, would that effect other log on user's window? I never try secondary log on or experiement with it before but just wondering if it possible for first user login to get screwed from second login user while using secondary login? cuz I havent check second user to see if I have to do window update, and update drivers again for second user. wonder if I already did on first user then dont need for second?