XP Repair Fault

Friends mothers laptop refused to boot so went and had a look and decided a XP Repair was in order.. Everything is OK accepted keycode etc. but when it reaches 'Completing Instalation' on writing to disc it stays at 27 minutes to completion. I have tried numerous times with same result. What is puzzling is that it is not frozen in fact the 5 green square activity lights (bottom right corner) are moving and the screen info about XP still scrolls. HD says 2004 and has had light usage over that period. Disc unmarked, any ideas Geeks as this one has me stumped rolleyes

Packard Bell EasyNote
40 Gig HD

 

I would run the manufacturers software for the hard drive testing, even at 3 years old- I have had hard drive's go after 9 months.

 

I meant to add, that I had a drive that I tried to install 98se/2000/ and XP , on, all in vain, as it died on the last try.

 

Thanx for reply baklogic.. I took your advice but had to order an external USB floppy as laptop not equipped for A drive.. Downloaded the Diagnostic and ran it and here is what Fujitsu said in their Great wisdom... failed to find hard drive check to see if jumper/cable/power cables are connected then reboot and if you see this message again after run '''There Could Be A fault On The Hard drive''' lol so what the bleeding hell is a diagnostic prog for then ??? I double quadruple checked that I had the correct diag prog.. which is annoying to say the least... Luckily the HD in the laptop had 2 partitions so I installed a Vista which went on Ok but cant install anything else. Am to e-mail Fujitsu and ask what is going on but me thinks another HD may be in order.

 

Latest update is that I used DBan Boot'N Nuke and totally Formatted HD with no problem. Reinstalled XP and several other software. Now I find that as I try to add more soft com slows right down and nearly stops with CPU running at 100%. I ran a memory test over night and that reported no faults. What I have noticed is that when I install or as just now anylized using a defrag prog the progress bar hardly moves and CPU at 100%, but when I stop the prog the install/operation then quickly hurry's up and functions OK. Still cant use the HD Diag as it cannot detect any HD. confused ???
Packard Bell EasyNote
Pent 4
2800 MHtz
2 X 256 ram
40 Gig HD Fujitsu

 

You could try Windows own CHKDSK /R , and restart to see what Windows , itself can do. It may be able to sort out any bad clusters, and leave you with a slightly smaller disc area, if that is the problem.
I have found a post that used this to work
ntfsresize manual (http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsresize.8.html)
The full rundown, is in the archive, here
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/archive/index.php/t-113086.html

 

Aha !! I have noticed in Task Manager that a certain 'netspool.exe' is hogging the CPU if I turn it off alls ok.. Have searched the n,et for answers and seems that a Reg Cleaner would do the job, but no its still hogging on reboot. Shall try your suggestions baklogic when I have resolved this.. if I can :cry

 

I googled around, but , unfortunately found a lot of foreign language forums, but it appeared that it, also, is possible that netspool.exe is a virus, or, trojan, in which case that might be why it came back - I am not certain that it is, though, because I could only get the gist of it, a little, and the virus side is not my best pidgeon.