After FC3 installation, WinXP CD Setup hangs at "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration"

[Didier Casse]

On Apr 5, 2005 5:44 AM, Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 4, 2005 10:32 AM, Jeff Vian <jvian10 at charter.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-04-04 at 15:28 +0800, Didier Casse wrote:
> > > Hi all,
> > >          I install FC3 dual boot with Windows on a laptop. I noticed
> > > that grub can't boot the WinXP partition and the things which sucks
> > > more is that the WinXP CD Setup hangs at "Setup is inspecting your
> > > computer's hardware configuration" and shows a black screen.
> > >
> > > It never happened previously. I did that on my friend's laptop and he
> > > can't live w/o windows.
> > > What's wrong and how to solve this problem?
> > >
> > > I suspect that I have to "fixboot" with the Windows recovery console.
> > > But no Windows CD wants to boot now. And my friend's laptop has no
> > > floppy drive.
> > >
> >
> > This may be a result of the early bug with FC where the drive geometry
> > is read differently with Windows and Fedora.  Check out fedorafaq.org
> 
> I don't think this is the same thing, as that bug has not been
> reported to exist in FC3, just in FC2.  Especially since the GRUB
> error 13 given seems to indicate that this is not the same bug.
> 
> (for reference this is the original thread with some more info
> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2005-April/msg00291.html)
> 
> Didier,
> 
> Can you give us a quick overview of what you did to install Fedora on
> this laptop?  Including how the laptop was repartitioned (I remember
> your friend did the partitioning, can you ask him/her?).  This might
> help us figure out what has happened to Windows.
> 

Ok my friend said he partitioned his HDD as C: D: E: F:. And he wanted
to give the D; to Linux. I told him previously that Linux is different
from WinXP and doesn' t require D: (different file systems!) or
whatever and that some free space would do.

So he told me he used partition magic and wiped out D: then relabelled:

E->D
F->E

And I installed linux of the free space (which I partitioned using
disk druid) which used to be the old D!

> One of the better courses of action might be to get the NTFS kernel
> module (see http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/) and mount all the
> Windows partitions to see what you can find.  Does it look like
> Windows is actually installed to hda1 like one would expect?  That is,
> can you find the WINDOWS or WINNT directory and ntldr file?  What is
> on hda11 (the second NTFS parition on the drive)?  Could Windows
> (somehow) actually be there instead?
> 

Already installed those NTFS stuff, I can see the disk drives D: and
E: but when it comes to C:, it can' t mount it!

I thought Win might be somewhere else so I tried to point GRUB to the
other location but w/o any success. So I realized it' s still in
/dev/hda1 but not accessible.


> About the Windows CD not booting.  Is the CD for Windows XP SP1?  and
> is the installed version SP2?  If so, this might be the problem.  I've
> heard that there are problems with SP1 CDs after upgrading to SP2, but
> I don't know how these problems manifest themselves.  Perhaps you
> could try to get MS to send you an SP2 disk if nothing else works.
> Can you check the CDs in another computer?  Preferably one that still
> has SP1, or if that isn't an option, then one without Windows at all.
> 

We' re in a research center. So we can get MS CDs easily especially
because the National University of Singapore invests big bucks into
Microsoft. And they buy all sorts of things with Microsoft. Well they
believe that the problems which can be solved with money are not
really problems. But hey we'll take that part offline. ;-)

So we got all kinds of CDs and the latest SPs. All of them work on
another PC but none of them works on the laptop.

I was thinking as a last resort to nuke everything and re-partition
and re-install from scratch. That would be drastic and I would prefer
to avoid it as I did so many customizations so that a newbie could
easily use FC!!!. Thanks Jonathan and Jeff for answering.

I installed Linux previously on 20 PC and laptops and never had such a
headache. It' s really annoying especially when I wanted to promote
Linux and install it on a friend that never used it before. So he
really freaked out now! :-(

-- 
Cheers,
Didier.

------------
Didier F.B Casse | PhD candidate | LiMiNT Beamline
Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS), 5 Research Link, Singapore 117603
Email: elprodigioREMOVE_THIS_ANTISPAM_MOJO at gmail.com|
Web: http://ssls.nus.edu.sg | GG Key 1024D/B3C57D01 2004-06-23