The never ending XP installation...

Recently I've been asked by a friend to reinstall Windows XP on a computer that crashed for some reason. First, I ensured that the existing XP doesn't boot (also booted from some service CDs to check the hard drive and ran an antivirus) to arrive to a conclusion that reinstalling was the only option. The rest of the procedure was clear and performed not once: insert an original installation CD, boot from it, choose recovery mode for existing XP installation. Everything seemed to work fine until the 34th minute, when the install froze...

Reset, repeat the procedure — same freeze. Hmm... The computer is pretty new with an Intel 945 chipset, Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1 Gb or RAM. Moreover, XP worked fine on it previously and no hardware changes were made since purchase. So I went to BIOS to disable all the fancy motherboard features and other options which are not needed during install (COM/LPT ports, on-board audio, USB, etc.), but this didn't help either. Removing/replacing a video adapter (which was basically the only 'extra' component plugged into the motherboard) was not an option (don't ask why).

I was really puzzled, so I decided to google if anybody else ran into similar trouble. Luckily, among a bunch of useless forum postings I found the following blog post: XP Installation - The 34 minute hiccup with additional discussion. Certainly, I didn't like the idea of messing with the *.inf files, but these resources also mentioned MSKB 828267. It became obvious that the problem is somewhere in the hardware.

The first thing I wanted to check if the install actually freezes at the 34th minute and here the tip about SHIFT+F10 was simply invaluable. Letting the install "hang" I periodically checked modification time and contents of the following files located in the %windir% folder:

• setupapi.log
• setupact.log
• setuperr.log
• pnplog.txt

and I saw that these files are being populated/updated (sic!), though it seemed that install froze.

Logs didn't show any errors during the time I monitored their contents (for about 4+ hours!), but at least I knew that the install didn't freeze and was actually doing something, so I just let it do whatever it did.

When I checked progress the next day when I came to the office (the install was working for the whole night) I was happy to see that it moved beyond the evil "34 minutes" and was asking for regional settings, etc. The rest of the procedure went faster, though not as fast as I expected, and finally it finished! XP booted fine, the Device manager didn't show any yellow exclamation marks — done!

This was the longest XP installation in my life. I don't know the actual reason why could it possibly take that long on such a powerful computer, but I was happy to get rid of it. Many thanks to techtracer's blog for the SHIFT+F10 tip!