Windows installation hangs at beginning

[wcs]

Hello, all.

I'm trying to install Windows in one primary partition, formated with FAT32.
The cd boots, then "Setup is trying to detect your hardware" (or something) appears, but everything remains black, nothing is displayed, seems to hang... weird.

It's not the cd as it goes to the next stage in another computer, and it's not the drive as I just booted something else from it.

Maybe it doesn't like something in my hardware (the hard drive, perhaps)....

Any suggestions?

[M0E-lnx]

Dont worry... that's just your typical wind os install

when the screen is not black, it is blue saying something about a fatal error

[wcs]

Looks like it....
I always thought of Windows as better than Linux installing-wise... better hardware detection, and the like.

Oh well 

[MikeCindi]

Which flavor of Windows are you trying to load? Perhaps trying the same under VMware or VBox may help narrow down the problems.

[wcs]

Oh, sorry... that's Win XP SP2.
The same cd installs just fine in VirtualBox. Strange.
I suspect some hardware thing, but don't know what...

I need it in a "real" partition, though. I have this device not working in VirtualBox and I want to make sure it doesn't work in a proper installation before returning it.

[wcs]

Ok... googled and googled and came up with three "solutions":

Deleting the ntfs partition, restoring the bios defaults, and erasing the mbr using dd.
Windows apparently has a hard time with Linux mbr.... damn.

Still doesn't work. Oh, well. Restored the MBR with a VL install cd.

My problem now is when restoring the BIOS to the defaults, the CPU fan does not move from a (more or less) constant speed. Even if the cpus are being stressed.

To be fair, I welcome the silence and the temps do not seem much hotter. Perhaps up to 5 degrees more in the cores (using coretemp) than before.
Still, it's awful... what if it heats too much?

Now, I cannot find any BIOS setting to change the fan speed or control.... ARGHHH!

Any ideas?
Besides telling me I'm a jerk for doing really dangerous things, messing with my BIOS, and using dd as root in the machine where I do all my work.

(reminds me of my DOS days, in which I would do anything and everything to my computer.... difference being, now I actually have real work there).

[MikeCindi]

WinXP does not like a linux MBR as you've noted. Perhaps using the "default" bios settings,  a raw partition that is the first on the disk, and a "clean" MBR. You can do this with TestDisk that is part of many utility disks such as the System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/). During the setup allow XP to create a NTFS or FAT32 partition. Not sure if this will get you going but it might.

[wcs]

I did try the three things together, except that the partition I wanted to install windows on was the last one on the disk.
Maybe that will work, but it is a bit of a pain to have gparted move every other partition to the "front"... might take hours.

Is this deliberate so that you need to erase your multi-boot capabilities to install Windows??
Even if it isn't, surely MS would have found a way to fix it, no?...
They keep on surprising me...

[MikeCindi]

AFAIK most of the later (NT-based) Microsoft OSs (if not all MS-based OSs) expect to the first OS on the disk. You could create a small partition to install the boot loader files and then load the bulk of the OS on a different partition. To do this I believe that after you format your partition you can define where you install XP (e.g. C:\Windows or D:\...). With Grub you can "fool" a winOS by hiding other partitions so that it thinks it's first. But if you use lilo and have your winOS's boot files anywhere but the first partition it won't work. As for MS finding a "work around" I don't think that will ever happen...notice the a winOS doesn't recognize most other partition types.
HTH,
Mike

[wcs]

Would putting a hidden tag on every other partition work with gparted work? mmm, maybe that's risky.
Creatign a small partition in the beginning might be good. Swap is my first partition, I think, maybe I can take some space from it. How big should this be? If it's only a few megs, it's ok....

thanks for your help.

[MikeCindi]

I think the minimum size for a partition with a Microsoft OS is 8 Mb. I don't know what the minimum size for  the boot partition/volume is though. The hard way to find out is to create the partition and start the install process. I did a quick google but did not get a definative answer. As for hiding the other partitions that may not be needed if XP's boot volume is first even if the system volume is elsewhere.

[wcs]

Still no luck.

I tried having a partition in the beginning of the disk (~40M), either unallocated or FAT32, with or without wiping the MBR (with dd, erasing the first 446 bytes).

Still the same thing, doesn't go past "setup is inspecting you hardware".

Thanks for your help, mikecindi.
I guess it's time to give up.

[MikeCindi]

One thing to check would be a hardware compatibility list for XP. In the past I've had NT4 balk at a Seagate HD. If you can determine what piece of hardware is problematic you could "replace" it long enough to get XP loaded (assuming it's not a vital piece) then put it back in the case and see what XP does with it.
Lastly, before giving up you might try a copy of XP without sp2. I have a copy with sp1 that won't load on my old laptop but the copy without a service pack will (I then jump to sp3).
If I come up with any other ideas I'll post...

[wcs]

Thanks a lot for the tips!
Indeed, it's a Seagate HD... this is a "refurbished" computer though, and I'm having a hard time tracking down these components on manufacturer's webpages. Hardinfo tells me the model number of the drive but then the specs are a bit different on the Seagate website for this model number. 

I also don't have any SP1 cd... 

I guess the solution could well be creating a first partition and erasing the MBR...
I might get down to moving everything else further down the disk at some point.
(Although I've never had bad experiences with gparted, it seems a bit risky to do that. Especially because I was already doing "naughty" things just to install Windows.)
For the moment, I'll live with it on VirtualBox. I only need it for a single program and the occasional firmware upgrading of some devices.

[toothandnail]

One thing you might try (if the CD boot gets far enough) is to try different ACPI settings. The menu for that is available when the 'Press F5 to install additional drivers' prompt comes up. If you press F6 at that stage, you should get a menu allowing different ACPI settings.

I had all sorts of strange problems with an HP laptop at one stage - it would get almost to the partitioning part of the install, then I'd get a black screen and nothing. Took ages to find the ACPI menu.

paul.