win xp upgrade halt..

[oceaneer]

Hi guys...A friend is building his own computer and has got it all up and running with fresh install of Win Me.

When he tries to update this with a Win XP upgrade CD, the computer freezes up during the "checking system" phase. He has tried a couple of times now with the same result. (It does not appear to be freezing at the exact same spot each time, but always during the system checking phase).

Any ideas?

[Greebe]

Has he checked the compatability of the system first?... OC'd anything?

[Snake-Eyes]

Is the checking system part you're referring to the Compatibility Checker that runs first? If so, I had the same problem the first two times I ran the upgrade against my WinME setup on my own home machine. I still don't know why it ran successfully the last time. I had killed all background tasks but the shell each time.

The same issue popped up on my wife's PC, and I couldn't get past that. I eventually settled on backing up her important files to CD (a good thing to do in any case), reformatted her hard drive, then ran the setup from scratch. I believe the process to do this (fuzzy headed at work from sinus meds today ) is to run winnt32.exe from the WINNT directory (might be backwards, lol. I'll check for sure when I get home and correct it if it is). This launches setup from the CD in the DOS prompt. Skips the compatibility checker too (no This Program Requires MS Windows messages either).

[The PIT]

I can remember my win2k locking up on a full restore. I had to reset the bios to get it to install. Don't ask why nothing had changed hardware wise.

[Greebe]

This may help...

http://www.aumha.org/a/xpupgrad.htm

[Tom]

Greebe,

Thanks!...Excellent link!