I bought a completely new system. I made a new partition on the hard drive (FAT 32) and proceeded to install my copy of Windows XP Pro. I boot from the CD, it loads the "Windows settings" or drivers or whatever it does, then it says "Starting Windows" and doesn't go any further. It just hangs on that screen. I then tried installing Windows 98, and installing Windows XP Pro over that. Win 98 installs fine, then during XP installation, it gets to the "Preparing installation" part (3rd part, 1 before the actual "Installing Windows") and almost exactly half way through I get a blue screen error, "Fatal error" or some such. I then tried the "Check System Compatibility" option on the XP CD, and that also crashed about exactly half way through (I think that this "Check System Compatibility" is the same as the "Preparing installation" when you go ahead and install it). Any ideas? Personally I think it's a hardware issue, but I took the system back to the store and they tested all the hardware and said it's fine.

I should also add that I have tried installing an upgrade version of XP, a full install of XP, and also the full install of XP SP1. To give you an idea of where it crashes during the "Check System Compatibility" option, look at step 6 at http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_ua.asp.

Try this: Run Chkdsk /r from the Recovery Console To run chkdsk /r from the recovery console, follow these steps: 1. Restart the computer. 2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console. 3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, choose the installation that you need to access from the Recovery Console. 4. When you are prompted to do so, type the administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, press ENTER. 5. At the command prompt, type chkdsk /r, and then press ENTER. 6. When Chkdsk has finished running, read the results, and then take any necessary steps to complete the process. For example, you may be prompted to run chkdsk /f to fix certain problems. 7. Restart the computer, and then try to run Setup again.

Here's my story. 3 weeks ago we had a customer return a new machine to us with the syptom that their machine would not boot. The ingredients: Asus A7N8X (Not Deluxe) AMD 2000+ CPU (Retail boxed) 256 megs Micron DDR 2100 (266Mhz) Maxtor 40G 7200 HD Combo DVD/CD-RW GeForce 2 MX400 Nvidia Video Generic Modem After surfing the web until there was no more water, installing 98, 98SE, ME, ugrading to XP on each of the OSes, upgrading to XP home on the above Oses, then XP Pro on the above OSes, (shew) then install 2000 on the above OSes.....we still could not get past the screen for "starting windows". We tried installing XP Home, Pro, and 2000 from OEM CDes. We also even went as far to try boxed retail versions as well, (even though I see no difference between boxed and OEM). Still no solution and still no install. That brings us to 3 weeks later and tonight venture for a solution. Here are the ingredients that replaced the above: ASUS A7V8X-X AMD 2000+ CPU (Retail boxed) 256 megs PNY 2100 DDR (266Mhz) PNY Ti 4200 GeForce 4 video Seagate 40G 7200 Plain Jane 50x CD-ROM No Modem After all of the time and money that we spent, still no success with getting XP to install. Did the same things as above minus installing all of the OSes. We only did a ME install and upgrade to XP Home. Finally the solution was mintes away...... We had a 1800+ CPU just sitting around.... FIXED!!!!!!!!!! XP went right in from the original CD, just as it should. We are a small computer company, but we did have some resources that are not at the disposal of everyone out there. I'm not going to say that this is the difinitive solution for anyone. Is you are having the same syptoms that I see a lot of people having lately.....try and borrow a friends CPU, and see what your individual results are. Good Luck!