Resolved xp home install freezes same place everytime

dimension 8400 3.2g processor with 4g memory

have reinstalled xp home on this machine 3 times now using 2 different hard drives. when it finishes the install and gets to the point where it tells you there is no antivirus sft found it freezes solid. same place every single time. have run h.d. diagnostics on both drives with no errors found have run memtester and so far no errors found. also ran dells diags on the board and processor and again no errors found.

what the heck could be causing it to do this at the same place every single time. has me baffled.

 

Are you using any anti virus software, if so, remove it and try the one in the link below from microsoft (it is free).

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/support.aspx?mkt=en-us

Also, looking in Event Viewer may indicate what is causing the problem

 

as i said in my post xp is finishing the install and going into the desktop it brings up the xp tour function then display that there is no antivirus installed which it always does cuz this is a clean install and then it freezes as it displays the security warning that there is no antivirus on the machine. ive done a thousand xp installs and this is the way the setup always works.

 

Will it run in safe mode?

 

nope as soon as i do a hard shut down and bring back up the cursor just sits in the top left of the screen and just sits there. have also used 2 different dell xp cd's with same results. can get into last known good either cursor just sits in top left of the screen. really strange i havent seen this before and i thought i knew all the xp install problems but guess i found a new one. has to be a machine thing but diags say nothing wrong.

 

This is an odd one

Just a couple of ideas, one is to remove all/any cards from inside and try again. The other is to use a boot floppy to get into windows so you might have a chance to load all the drivers. There is a good selection of free downloads to make various boot discs from here. The large disc utility is not free.

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

One other idea is to flash the bios.

 

trying to trick it isnt going to do any good. some thing is causing it to freeze up and unless i can figure out what the machine will do no one any good. this is just a plain everyday reformat and reinstallation of xp it shouldnt do this unless some hardware is causing it now i just gotta find what hdw device it doesnt like. this machine had xp on it then i upgraded it to win7 and it ran perfectly for a few months then pow. put back to xp and now i cant get that to work. its an old machine but it has been upgraded and it has a good p4 processor i hate to trash it but i might have to.

 

My idea was not to trick the PC into loading windows but to use a floopy boot disc to give you access to windows so you can check for problems and get all the correct drivers loaded. That is if that approach works. It will be a lot easier to see what is going wrong if you can use a boot disc to launch windows, on the other hand it may still crash.

So, the PC had a major crash before you reinstalled the OS? What happened?

 

just a normal boot to the xp cd and yes did reformat entire drive as well as deleted the 100mb partition that win 7 created.

this was a machine that i got from a client who brought a new dell from me. there were no problems that client told me of so i just redid the whole machine back to factory defaults.

win7 worked great for a couple months then all of a sudden got this message that the license may not be valid. hell its a dell oem dvd of win 7 so wasnt sure why that was happening so i just put back to winxp but i havent been able to get winxp back up and running even with 2 different h.d.

clean install of winxp and it stops exactly at the same point the 3 times ive redone it. like i said so far diags show no problems running the memory diags now and will all night long and the run the cpu and board in a loop. other than that i have no clue what could be causing this. nothing out of ordinary hocked to machine just usb mouse and keyboard and the dvd drive for the install nothing else.

 

Hi, just a thought - have you disconnected everything on the Motherboard and cleaned connectors and rebuilt to see if there is a bad connection? Neil.

 

This PC has a set of four diagnostic lights on the back panel, after a failed reboot see what the lights show, they should all be green if everything is normal. Is there any sound from the PC during boot, errors should produce a beep code.

This link shows the light codes.

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8400/SM/index.htm Then select Advanced Troubleshooting

Have you checked the cmos battery?

As I suggested earlier, have you tried flashing the bios? There is a bios reset on the board, have you tried that?

 

oh yeah i always delete any partitions that are on the machine and recreate them and i always use the xp sp2 cd.

all this really doesnt apply on the one drive i used cuz it was brand new and still the problem happens.

 

this just doesnt make any sense. ive replaced the memory with new same lock up, ive tried 3 different pci-e graphic card same lock up. gets into the desktop and then it just locks up. ive unplugged everything except the keyboard, mouse, display and dvd drive same results. have looked at the board and see no visible sign of leakage. have looked at the event viewer and the only thing showing there is dcom says it cant start because in safe mode and thats the only error in any of the viewers. all diagnotics lights on the back of machine are all green.

what the heck could be causing this. has me whipped.

 

The only thing you have not tried that I suggested earlier is flashing the bios. It is possible for the bios to be infected. Can't imagine what else it could be.

 

i hate flashing bios and really having to update the bios like was a normal thing to do many years ago really is a thing of the past. not many new oem machines ever need there bios flashed. i will see if dell has a new bios update for the 8400 but guess worth a try or i just use this machine as target practice. always wanted to see what a 30-30 would do to a computer and this one is getting me ****** enough that i just might do it.

hard to believe a bug got thru my defenses there pretty good and its not an email device so no way it got thru that way.

 

This is an odd problem with no obvious answer so all I can say is good luck and please let us know if you resolve this mystery.

 

brought the bios from a01 up to a09. amazing how easy a bios update is these days compared to 10 years ago when they werent fun to do.

same results after bios upgrade. i moved the system to one of my other workstations with different keyboard, mouse, speakers and the system worked fine. so i replaced the multi keyboard with a plain jane dell keyboard and kept the speakers unplugged (altec Lansing) and so far machine is working. so looks like i either have a bad multimedia keyboard or the speakers sending bad signal. dont think ive ever seen either of those 2 devices cause such a problem. have you ???