Hi, I am trying to reinstall Windows 2000 PRO and everything is fine until the final steps where it begins to register components and (always) at about 1/3 of the way through (the register components) it hangs and the hard drive light stops. The first time I waited about 30 minutes and nothing changed. After I booted up to resume the reinstallation, this time I waited 3 hours (at the same point, about 1/3 of the way through (the register components)) and nothing changed. Please let me know what I can do to resolve this, I can't use the laptop until I finish the reinstall. Thank you! Sincerely, Kevin.

Hi Kevin, Did you wipe the drive and start from scratch? If so, you may have HD issues. M2

This is indicative of a hardware problem. I would look for swollen, bulging, leaking capacitors first. Why the reinstall?

Hi, I have run Norton Utilities numerous times (actually every time it booted it would scan the HD) and everything was good (actually this HD is less than a year old.). I had to reinstall because the PC would boot up only past the Password dialog box, then it would hang. If I were to boot up in "Safe Mode", it would boot up all the way into Windows. I tried everything (including selective Apps. startups) and nothing resolved the problem. Kevin.

I just realised that in my previous reply I didn't indicate where to look for the bad capacitors. They are components of the MBoard. The round, upright, cylindrical things that are scattered around the board. Look for bulging tops where the top is pie cut, or for leaking anywhere.

In order to do this, he would have to take the LAPTOP apart. I wish people would read posts b4 replying. Try going into BIOS and resetting all BIOS settings to defaults. Should be a option to do this in BIOS. And please do not wait 3 hours for the install to fininsh the whole install process should not take more than 1-1/2 hours.

Rick You are correct, I read his post again. My only excuse is that the laptop specs would be better in the system specs at the top by the posters name. What I did see was the PIII 800 and thought this would make the MB about the right age for that bad capacitor electrolyte. Kevin You could change your system specs here to reflect in the header that it is a laptop.