Any Idea's problem with xp installation

EdTheLad

I have a Sony Vaio which has been running win xp perfectly up until recently.
Afew weeks ago i noticed i was unable to telnet or ping remote machines and they couldnt ping me,this was experienced on both eth and wireless.After disabling,deleting firewalls and drivers still no luck.Anyway i decided to do a
reinstall.Now everytime i try a reinstall the system freezes at the User Lience Agreement, ive upgraded my bios since with no luck also checked and there is nothing fancy to configure at the bios level.I've created a boot disk, completed a scandisk and formated the drive with new partition and still it doesnt work.I have a standalone system with no new hardware since previous installations.
Anyone have any idea's where the problem could be? At this stage im close to bining my pc.

zenboy

perhaps, it is better if you give us the specs of your pc so we could go on from there. When you say the pc freezes at the point of license agreement, it that after or before this point, and can you use the keyboard or mouse to response? Have you check to see if you might have a leak memory?

EdTheLad

Check this link for the specs http://www.vaio-link.com/specifications/specifications.asp?l=en
During installation everything works fine until the License Agreement page which asks press f8 to agree.At this point of the install its impossible to use the mouse as its not installed.Keyboard gives no response.As far as i know this is the part of the install which is about to write to the harddrive.I searched the net and read this problem can occur due to virus detection software, the software somehow locks write ability to the harddrive.
Since ive formted the harddrive i would imagine ive deleted all essences of virus detection software.I dont knw how to check for a memory leak and probably its not possible now since i have no operating sytem.Anyway
i would be extremely surprised if i had a memory leak since all i had was 128M ram which was coping fine with most apps.

zenboy

You haven't given me the model of your pc, so how could I input the info on the website? I can't be sure from your post but I would suspect a hard drive problem.
But before we could go and test the hard drive, you can test the memory by switch the memory stick with another one and see if that fixes the problem.
As for the hard drive, you could use a great utility from Steve Gibson's SpinRite v6. This program would such the whole hard drive and also check for virus. Here is the link:
[url] http://www.kickstartnews.com/reviews/utilities/spinrite_v6.html[/url]
You could get a trial version and use it for a limited time. Hope that will help.

3000GT

To test the hard drive i use fdisk and repartition it just to make sure all boot virus are wiped. But this is not 100% sure test as you can only create partitions up to 32GB with it, so using a HDD test utility by the HDD manufacture would help, and for the mem test i would use microsofts memory tester.

I would do what zenboy has said, try swaping the RAM as one of my mates had this type of problem and it turned out to be ram.

EdTheLad

Ran spinrite v6 at level 4 and found no errors on my harddisk,ive changed the ram and still problem persists.Next im gonna try installing win98.
Anyone have any other ideas ? all i can think of now is the problem must be on the motherboard.My laptop model is a Sony Vaio PCG-FX108K.

3000GT

I might be wrong but it worth a shot...

With the sony VAIO`s from PC World, they come with an Image CD of the computer, Could the HAL not match that of the image and hence will not load the recovery image? Maybe it dont recognise the BIOS as part of the original build? As with XP when imaging PC the HAL needs to match or the PC will not install, but i dunno if it would do it at this stage and would be more the end with blue screens.

EdTheLad

I've installed win xp on this machine loads of times so thats not an issue.Anyway the latest new is its looking good to go.I removed the harddisk and put it in my flatmates pc as he's away for the day, am i evil ? yep
Install looked good on friends pc when i got to the licence agreement no problem it proceeded and i choose a quick format, unfornately my friend pc has a problem with overheating and it powered off in the middle of the format.Anyway i put the disk back in my pc and hey presto things are looking good.Nearly at the end of the install and hopefully all is well.I think Murphy has been out to get me over the last couple of days.Anyway thanks for the support guys, its great when you know theres someone out there to answer some questions.

zenboy

that is quite strange. I would like to know more about this problem. My second suggestion would be to check your BIOS for virus, but you had already done that. Why would reformating the same harddrive on a different PC and putting it back on the original pc works? That doesn't make sense?
Keep us posted on this pc. would ya?

EdTheLad

Hey zenboy, glad i just read your post as in the mean time i niped out to buy afew beers in celebration and if i looked later id be too drunk to answer.
Yep i totally agree very strange indeed,installation completed sucessfully ive installed all my additional software even my network problem is solved so its happy days.Previosly i tryed installing xp prof multiple times and always froze at license ageement, then i created winxp boot floppy disks just incase the cd drive was causing a poblem.Next i created a win98 boot floppy to access dos to run a fdisk and chdsk which i used to format and repartition the drive.At this point i asked for assistance from you guys, i created that spinrite disk and ran the level 4 harddisk analysis which came up with no errors.My plan then was to install win98 but since i didnt have a cd handy i decided to try my HD in my flatemate laptop.
After that format all is good.Now the only difference i can see is that the boot disks i had formated the drive as a FAT32 file system wheras when i formated on flatemates pc i used ntfs, could that be the reason i dont have clue?Currently im studying for CCNP/CCIE so when or if i get to do microsoft certs maybe ill have a better idea.
So my advice is to keep a record of these events as ive search the net alot about this problem and its not unusual for the install to fail at the license agreement but nobodies been giving any workarounds.
Take it easy guys, but its been fun troubleshooting this problem in a sick perverted way

jescab

yes you want to use NTFS with XP