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

[Jonathan Berry]

On Apr 4, 2005 9:12 PM, Didier Casse <elprodigio at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 5, 2005 5:44 AM, Jonathan Berry <berryja at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> >
> > (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

Hmm, out of curiosity, did he ever boot Windows after all of this? 
I'm trying to figure out whether Fedora did something bad or if
perhaps it happened with the re-partitioning.

> 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!

Well, that's not good.  What kind of error does it give you?  Sounds
like the partition has been corrupted some way.

> 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.

More bad news.

> > 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.

Very strange.  What kind of laptop?  Was Windows installed at the
factory, or did your friend install it?  That is, has it ever worked
to your knowledge?
Wait, did you use LVM to install Linux?  If so, that could be the
problem; the LVM could potentially really confuse Windows.  If you
used the Disk Druid option to use the free space, this is probably
what was used (or did you use the manual option?).  But your fdisk -l
in the other thread doesn't look like there are any LVMs.  There also
aren't any swap paritions...

> 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.

Never an agreeable option, but it may come down to that.  Be sure to
save any wanted data that is still accessible.  Is there anything else
you could boot to try to look at the partition?  You mentioned
Partition Magic, could you do something with it?

> 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! :-(

Understandable.  But hey, it's Windows that isn't working now, not
Linux : ).  I'm sure he wasn't quite ready to go all out with Linux
yet, though.  Now, did Linux kill Windows is the question.  I've done
this several times as well and not seen anything like this.  Well,
keep us posted.

> --
> Cheers,
> Didier.

Jonathan

PS: best wishes on the PhD!