XP Setup Disc ----> loop

My sister (who is very rookie status) has a new Dell computer with XP home edition and it has been working wonderfully. She installed a program for inventoring her stuff at home and now the problems have started. The best I have been able to ascertain is that somehow she got an error message that something along the lines of her Windows XP had become corrupted and she needed to insert her Windows XP disk which she did. It starting reinstalling XP when it got to about 34 minutes left in the installation and she received an error message that was something along the line of bad_call_pool and said she needed to uninstall whatever it was that was causing that problem. She had to reboot and the system won't let her get to anything remotely close to the area where she can uninstall. So I got the called to help which led me to driving across town and inheriting the problem.
If I tried to have the computer bootup in safemode when it did it gave me the error message that Windows XP Setup can not boot in safe mood the computer will now reboot. It then reboot and ask for the disk get to about 34 minutes into the install and get the error message of bad_call_pool or something like it. I can not get the computer to allow me to boot in safe mode, go to normal mode and uninstall the program, let me stop the reinstall of XP, or go to restore.
Does anyone know how to resolve this?

 

If the error is really bad_pool_call then you are probably looking at a driver issue - something is probably trying to use memory addresses it should not be using.

First thing to try is to remove all the bits & pieces you can do without (so keep video, keyboard, mouse, and not much else) and try again.

If it fails again, try a different video card.

If all else fails, a new PC should be under warranty so let Dell fix the thing.

 

this article title always cracks me up..
Setup Stops Responding with 34 Minutes Remaining
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;828267&Product=winxp


Basically, check out that article and try to figure out whats hosed during detection. Let it reboot 5 or 6 times, it will skip a little futher each time, hopefully past the bad part. If not, crack that log file and see whats doin in the pnp and other log files. Might be able to figure out that you need to pull a nic, or a modem to get past the setup. Worst case, yank the box down to its barest components, swap slots with pci cards, make sure the BIOS is up to date and try try again. There is a chance you have a faulty hardware component.

 

Well to summarize what ended up happening:
After an hour of talking to people at Dell who asked the same questions and provided no answers -
Eventually talked to real tech support and they walked through and got everything reinstalled.
Though Dell start up screen says SafeMode is F12, it is actually F10 for this type of problem.
Beats me -
She's happy, so I'm happy.