XP install hangs at 23 or 24 minutes remaining

**Greg's_Electronics** · January 26th, 2008, 08:43 AM

OK, first of all, I'm new here, but not a total noob. I've been building PCs for 8 years and am a self-employed tech.

So I build a brand new machine for a customer
Asus M2N-MX SE m/b (used this model many times with great success)
2 X 1GB Kingston DDR2 667 (used this brand for ages too)
AMD Athlon X2 4000+
Seagate 80GB SATA (the only brand of HDD I'll use)
LG DVD-RW (the only brand of optical I'll use)
Windows XP Home OEM (eh...)

Setup drive with Seagate's software, start installing Windows XP Home, and the installation stalls (hangs) at 23 minutes remaining. It'll sit there at that spot even overnight, so it's not my imagination. Animation in bottom right keeps going, and the "advertising" screens keep changing, but it never progresses further.

Zero-filled hard drive, ran Memtest86+ and Seagate's full diagnostic (no faults found). Tried Windows install again . . . 23 minutes remaining and all drive activity stops.

Changed hard drive to another new Seagate 80GB SATA, and replaced memory with more Kingston 1GB SIMMS. Replaced Athlon with Sempron 3600+. Replaced power supply. Formatted drive and tried again. Stalled at 23 minutes.

Replaced motherboard with new M2N-MX SE, optical drive with LG CD-ROM, and grabbed a new XP install disk. Stalled at 23 minutes. Now what's left to change?

Also noticed that Knoppix won't boot on the same machine either, even with hard drive unplugged.

Later in the week, a business customer orders 5 new machines:
Asus M2N-MX SE m/b
2 X 1GB Kingston DDR2 667
AMD Athlon X2 4000+
Seagate 250GB SATA
LG CD-RW
Floppy drive (yeah, I know, but they have to have them)
Windows XP Pro OEM

Every one of these machines is doing the same thing!!
They've all passed a memtest86+ test, and Seagate diagnostics test, but XP Pro appears to hang during install at 24 minutes remaining. I left 2 of them on overnight, and they were at 10 minutes remaining in the morning, but something is really wrong here!

Knoppix gets to the boot prompt, but then goes to a black screen 1/2 second after Enter is pressed, just like on the first machine.

I've tried resetting the BIOS defaults, no difference. I even reflashed the BIOS on one of the boards just as a test, but it made no difference either, even though the BIOS flash was a successful upgrade.

The only thing I can think of now is the monumentally big coincidence that I've got a batch of bad M2N-MX SE's that all have the same, obscure fault.

Any ideas anyone?
Greg
Greg's Electronics
Inwood, Ontario

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 10:14 AM

Welcome to Windrivers Greg

What's left to change you ask... well, I assume you have done so, but I want to check any way.

Tried one stick of 1gb (max 512 will do for testing)ram.
Cables
XP Pro disk (and it's xp sp2)
Turn off the onboard video and use a pci-x16, pci-x or even a pci card.

**Ferrit** · January 26th, 2008, 10:56 AM

Also change the power supply

**Greg's_Electronics** · January 26th, 2008, 11:28 AM

Yes, I forgot to mention that. I have tried the 1GB/single channel memory trick. Didn't work.

I replaced all the cables when I changed the motherboard. No go.

I tried a couple of different XP Home disks on the first computer, and I'm trying with an OEM XP *Pro* disk for the other 5 machines. (These are all original Microsoft CDs with legit keys, nothing burned, etc.)

Knoppix won't boot on these machines, regardless of video card (onboard, or with a PCI-e nVidia 7100) and Windows XP won't install regardless of video card configurations either.

I think it's definitely strange that Knoppix won't boot. It runs on just about anything.

Now, something else I just discovered:
Last night one of the XP Pro machines was stuck at 24 minutes left. This morning it was at 10 minutes left, apparently hung. I left it. A full 14 hours after it seemed to hang at "24 minutes remaining", it crashed out to a BSOD with an 0x000000EA stop error screen which was blaming "framebuf"!

I'm still researching this. There aren't many references to this on the web, but several refer to the CPU L1 cache being turned off. In the BIOS program for the M2N-MX SE, there is no provision to turn the cache on or off. It shows it's size, but it's a non-configurable item.

Greg
Greg's Electronics
Inwood, Ontario

**Greg's_Electronics** · January 26th, 2008, 11:29 AM

"Also change the power supply"

Yup, already did. No difference.

**Platypus** · January 26th, 2008, 11:40 AM

Originally Posted by NooNoo

Turn off the onboard video and use a pci-x16, pci-x or even a pci card.

Indeed video figures high in people's experience of hangs at hardware detection, and a black screen is certainly a possible symptom for Linux not handling cranky video. Turning off the onboard video and trying the install with a PCI video card seems a good way to check that.

**CCT** · January 26th, 2008, 11:59 AM

Asus has a wierd Sata troubleshooting FAQ - mentions the install problem and says could be due to dirt/corrosion in the Sata ports/connectors. Advises cleaning them out.

Must have bought some cheap steel!

http://support.asus.com.tw/faq/faq.a...el=M2N-MX%20SE

( How to troubleshoot SATA problems )

**Greg's_Electronics** · January 26th, 2008, 12:44 PM

OK, since I have a total of 6 brand new machines all doing the same thing, I've tried various experiments on them.

OMGmissinglink:
Yup, I swapped out the optical drive on two of the 6 machines, didn't make a difference.

Platypus and NooNoo:
I swapped the onboard nVidia 6150 for a PCI-e nVidia 7100 on two of the 6 machines. Same results with both Knoppix and Windows.

NooNoo:
I tried using one SIMM running single channel. No go.
Cables got changed on the first machine (SATA, IDE) when the motherboard got changed. Power cables were changed when I swapped out the power supply. The other 5 machines were all built from new parts, but I haven't swapped cables. I just built them in the same way I've been building countless other machines for the 4 months or so that I've been using the M2N-MX SE m/b. I've been doing most of the experiments to diagnose the problem on 2 of the 6 machines. No sense in swapping out 6 new parts for 6 more new parts when it didn't help on the first 2.
I've used a total of 3 different original Windows CDs, (2 XP Home and 1 XP Pro) all with the same result. (All were legit originals, no burned CD-Rs)

An interesting side here for one machine that stalled at "24 minutes remaining" to install XP Pro last night. I left it on all night. This morning, it said "10 minutes remaining" but it seemed to be doing nothing at all. A full 14 hours or so after it stalled at "24 minutes" it crashed out to a BSOD 0x000000EA stop error screen that was blaming "framebuf" for the crash. Most online research I've done for this error during XP install refers to the CPU L1 cache being shut off. In the BIOS for the M2N-MX SE, there is no way to shut off that cache.
It's in a non-configurable report-only section of the BIOS.

Greg
Greg's Electronics
Inwood, Ontario

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 01:08 PM

Try an ATI pci card

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 01:45 PM

It would really help Greg if you READ his posts. He has already done bios updates and turned off the onboard graphics altogether.

**Greg's_Electronics** · January 26th, 2008, 04:09 PM

I don't have a PCI ATI card, but I tried a few scrappers out of my junk bin.
The Trident gives no video at all (could be a blown card).
The Creative Graphics Blaster locks half way through POST with a cursor in the top left. (something I've seen it do before on the M2N-MX)
The Diamond Multimedia boots with no video (not sure of it's chipset)

Funny thing is, I built an M2N-MX SE/Athlon X2 4000/2GB Kingston/Seagate 80GB SATA/LG DVD-RW/XP Home machine last week, and it set up quickly and ran like a top. Other than the floppy drive, there is no difference between it and these machines.

No, disconnecting the floppy drive doesn't work......tried that.

Greg
Greg's Electronics
Inwood, Ontario

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 05:22 PM

Originally Posted by Greg's_Electronics

I don't have a PCI ATI card, but I tried a few scrappers out of my junk bin.
The Trident gives no video at all (could be a blown card).
The Creative Graphics Blaster locks half way through POST with a cursor in the top left. (something I've seen it do before on the M2N-MX)
The Diamond Multimedia boots with no video (not sure of it's chipset)

Funny thing is, I built an M2N-MX SE/Athlon X2 4000/2GB Kingston/Seagate 80GB SATA/LG DVD-RW/XP Home machine last week, and it set up quickly and ran like a top. Other than the floppy drive, there is no difference between it and these machines.

No, disconnecting the floppy drive doesn't work......tried that.

Greg
Greg's Electronics
Inwood, Ontario

So you need to check those video cards on a known good machine. If you get the same results, you know the pci cards are naff, but if not, you must be looking at a mass RMA of the motherboards.

**NooNoo** · January 26th, 2008, 05:23 PM

You removed the floppy drive - did you disable the floppy controller in bios? And since we are scratching our heads, disable the onboard audio and nic while yer at it!

**JustaGuess** · August 15th, 2008, 09:31 AM

I supposedly just "finished" an XP Pro setup and install. I was having a similar problem of the install progress hanging. It first started around the 23rd minute too. Mine also eventually progressed over the course of many hours. I clocked the speed at a minimum of 45 minutes for every estimated minute the on-screen install estimation calculated.

After nearly 24 hours, I did eventually get through, giving the audio beep signal, then rebooted. After "spending a few moments" setting the time zone a internet setup, which was a crawl, I managed to get to the windows splash screen and just barely into the desktop. Actually I didn't really make it into the desktop all the way. I got the desktop wall paper and that was it. I eventually tried ALT + CTRL + Delete to call up the task manager to see if I might be able to shut down and restart.

It somewhat loaded up but the CPU turned out to be at 100%. (No surprise there) But what was really odd is that the number of processes was at 60 and jumped up to 93. before it totally froze me out of access to anything within it.

This older tower (Power User brand) had once had XP Pro working just fine on it. But It was lost to a virus over a year ago. I had done a complete reformat just before trying to re-install everything just the other day.

Anyway, I just thought I'd mention this to see if anyone saw any possible connection to this thread. If so and you know what I might be dealing with. I'd sure like to know.

Thanks

**street1** · August 17th, 2008, 12:58 AM

I agree with NooNoo on this. Physically remove every add on card not
needed to do a basic install.

Is this a copy,or is each install disk Authenic? Not being rude friend
this is just a question.