My brother just built a computer and ran into a problem and so he gave it to me to fix it, but I cant figure it out. Basically when installing windows xp, it gets half way, then all of a sudden it seems to go into a sleep mode or something. I end up having to restart, it resumes and when it gets to that certain point again it seems to go to sleep again. I am sure it isnt sleeping, but that is what the symptom is like. So I cant get the operating system installed. Im sure the answer is pretty simple, but I checked the BIOS and the jumpers on the board no problems. Here is the hardware:
Asus P4SDX
P4 2.4G, 512K
512MB DDR333
Maxtor 40GB, 7200RPM
Radeon 7500, 64MB DDR
Live Dobly 5.1 Sound Blaster Live

If anyone can offer any suggestions that would be great. Thanks a lot.
-Scott

I would try to do the install by copying the files from the CD to the hard drive. This will eliminate the CD drive as a culprit. If you still have trouble I would remove the sound card and then lastly change video cards.

Jimi_l

probably your BIOS, try and turn stuff such as power save off and stuff.

and also try taking grphics card out, buggy cards can cause problems i.e. gainward Geforce 4 440 :-/

Its not the BIOS, that was my first instinct too. Let me clarify a little bit. It is at a certain specific point in the installation process (I mean the exact same point everytime) that the system just sort us goes into what seems like a sleep mode. The monitor goes black, the CD-Rom stops spinning, and the only option I have is to restart. Does anyone know what could be causing this.

Could be a problem copying one of the files. Like Jimi said, try copying the files from the cd to the hard drive, xcopy /s the I386 directory from the cd to a directory on your hard drive, and run 'winnt' from there. If that doesn't work, it could be bad ram, or a bad DIMM slot. If you have two sticks of ram, try taking one out and see if that works.

Let me give yall a little update. I have replaced motherboard, so the DIMM slots arent the problem. Exchanged the RAM, not the RAM. Bought a high powered CPU fan, not the CPU fan. Changed out the power supply, not the power supply. Not the sound card, not the modem. Tested a different video card, not the video card. The WD hard drive has been replaced by a Maxtor. Not the BIOS. Now for the software:
Someone was able to actually get the OS installed. I dont know how they got it because at 34 minutes remaining the system would reboot. But anyways, it got installed. When booting into windows after about 5 seconds in windows it reboots. Heres the kicker: when I go into safe mode there are no problems.
Now let me give my final hunches. The only potential problems are as follows: bad CPU (but that wouldnt be consistent with the system rebooting at the exact same point everytime, I can go safe mode and stay in BIOS forever and there would be no problems), bad connection with LED lights or CD and floppy drives that would cause a short circuit (very doubtful), or a windows software problem. I think it might be the windows xp disk. The disk is OEM but its holograms are goldish in color and not silver. Like there is nothing silver to the disk. It is gold in color, but the holograms look authentic. Someone please help, this has been going on forever.