I'm doing a clean install of xp pro. I've fdisked and reformated the hdd but when I boot up on the cdrom with xp pro in it it goes through a windows setup but hangs and freezes the computer at a point where it reads at the bottom of the screen "setup starting windows". I get this both if I boot up using the cdrom and if I use the boot disks for the floppy drive. What could I be doing wrong? I won't be able to try anything till this evening when I get home from work but a co-worker suggested unplugging my video card and network card and other unnecessary things that aren't needed for installing windows. I checked my hardware prior to starting and I believe everything is xp compatible. Any advice or help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

One thing I didn't do when setup began was when it says press "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver" I didn't press F6. I just let the setup run through it's routine and then it freezes up. A few questions here: 1. What is a third party SCSI? 2. What is a RAID driver? 3. How do I know if I need to do any of this? Thanks.

SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. It is an altrnative interface to the stand IDE interface that comes with a PC. A this party driver is software to make it work. RAID stand for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. It is a method of linking multiple hard disks together to improve performance and reliablility. If you do not know what these things are, the chances are you dont need them. They are non-standard additions to a PC. I would not unplug the video card. Nothing will work without that. Removing the network card might help. You can always re-install it once Windows is up and running. Try formatting the drive you are installing Windows on with the XP CD and format it with NTFS. See if that helps. Stuart