system: intel p4 (850mv motherboard) 256 mb rambus c: nt 2000(fat32, 30G size), d: xp(ntfs, 30G size) i have installed XP pro booting off of the cd. there are no errors when installing the os. as soon as i attempt to boot the first time after installation, i have an immediate hang ( see screenshot at ectosphere.com/show/p1010112.jpg). I have tried: safe mode bootup (works...all the other modes hang) disabling devices such as built-in ethernet, serial/paralell ports, usb, etc changing various motherboard bios settings i have also swapped video cards because when i have watched the load sequence, the last thing i see loading is agp440.sys (this might be the last thing that loads but am unsure) i have disabled device drivers once in safe mode such as the agp processor i have reinstalled the os serveral times i have tryed the cd on a tecra laptop (os installed and operates fine) i have installed the latest bios for the motherboard interestingly enough, i did install XP while logged into 2000 and this did work for a few months but then the system hung and now i am back to the first problem. my next step is to familiarize myself with how to obtain a file listing of loaded drivers and see while file it is hanging on as it is probably not agp440.sys as i eluded to above. can anyone diagnose this? any suggestions? thanks for you help! -Fred

try booting with a different graphics card installed. go for a pci one first and see what happens. if this works then try a different agp graphics card. this should help you narrow the problem down if the video card is the problem.

Try doing this to find possible causes of your problem. Rite clik My Computer and select "Manage". On the left, double clik "Event Viewer". Rite clik on "Application" and select "clear all events". Do the same thing with "Security" and "System". This will clear all the "Events". Restart your machine. Then, after it misbehaves, reboot, check the "Events" in the 3 places that you previously cleared. You should find some clues in there as to what happens when the machine messes up. If you rite clik on an event and go to properties, it gives you an explanation as to what happened. At least that's how I recall it works from my memory. Good luck. Let us know how you make out.

i already tried a different video card. as for the event log, it is a service and gets loaded much later in the boot process so is of no use for this problem but thanks for the suggestions. anyone else have anything more? thanks Fred

Fred, did you do a clean install in which you reformatted the hd?

Yes, various clean installs have been performed!

nice screenshot dude, real helpful ;)