I haven't been able to get XP beyond the "Setup is starting Windows" screen at the beginning of text mode setup. Here is what I have done.

There are two KB articles in reference to XP hanging at that screen. Both recommend exactly what you'd expect: update your mass-storage drivers, disable ACPI in BIOS, manually specify non-ACPI HAL in setup, remove all peripherals, etc.

I have removed everything in the computer. Here is what I have-
AMD Athlon 700 Mhz 200 FSB - by Acorp
VIA Chipset/686B Southbridge
512M PC133 SDRAM (purchased together, and confimed good) - by Micron
6.4G Fujitsu HD (something like that)
onboard sound
NVidia GeForce2 - 32MB

Everything else was removed from the computer. I disabled sound in the BIOS, as well as USB ports, and System and Video BIOS caching and shadowing.

This is a fresh install, after having Win2K on the computer. I deleted the Win2K partition with Partition Magic 7, then rebooted, then created a new FAT32 partition with PM7, then rebooted (partition and format in one swipe).

I then used Win98 Fdisk to double-check my partition. I then tried installing from the CD. No go - it freezes on the Starting Windows screen. I tried copying the entire CD to the HD, diabling and disconnecting my CDROM, and running setup manually from DOS - copies all files fine, then reboots itself, then again, freezes at the Starting Windows screen. I have another computer (400MHz Intel with 128M SDRAM), so I tried installing on that computer - no problems.

Double-checked my jumper pins on the HD; they are correct. I have the latest BIOS (which is 2 years old...but my MB mf hasn't released a new one). The only thing I've found that may be the cause is the VIA chipset. There are Via drivers available (4.35 4in1) that are supposed to enable functionality with XP, but how do I get these drivers to load during Setup? I tried researching the F6 thing, but a txtsetup.oem is required to tell XP what the drivers are for.

I tried renaming the .inf file that comes with the 4in1, and also with the IDE and sound drivers individually, to txtsetup.oem, but there are certain lines that don't have the right syntax I suppose, because it tells me that line 85 has a syntax error, then if I delete line 85 (haha - I'm *sure* those were just extra lines anyway), now it doesn't like line 123 or something.

Anyway, I gave up and reinstalled Win2K, but XP was a gift, and it starting to look as though it'll have to wait for a new MB at least, but I was wondering if anyone else had any ideas...
Thanks

Ron