PC Freezes

Hi all,

I just got myself a used IPEX PC, Pentium III 866, 256mb RAM, 20gb HDD.
It came with no operating system. I have tried installing XP, '98 & ME on
this box.
Each time, the installation almost finishes & asks for my login & password,
which I provide, usually no problems there, but when I get to the stage
where it
detects new devices, I get the choice to install automatically or select
from a list.
Once I have clicked on ok to continue, the PC just freezes.
No mouse movement, can't Alt, Ctrl & Del. I have to press the reset button
on the box. Once reset, it goes through the motions of finishing
installation again,
then freezes again.

Any ideas? This is really frustrating. I'm guessing it's a hardware problem,
but what?

Thanks, Dave.

try taking all cards out of computer except video card then see if you can
load xp or what ever you want if that works install each card one at a time
bill
"David Barratt" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I just got myself a used IPEX PC, Pentium III 866, 256mb RAM, 20gb HDD.
It came with no operating system. I have tried installing XP, '98 & ME on
this box.
Each time, the installation almost finishes & asks for my login &
password,
which I provide, usually no problems there, but when I get to the stage
where it
detects new devices, I get the choice to install automatically or select
from a list.
Once I have clicked on ok to continue, the PC just freezes.
No mouse movement, can't Alt, Ctrl & Del. I have to press the reset button
on the box. Once reset, it goes through the motions of finishing
installation again,
then freezes again.

Any ideas? This is really frustrating. I'm guessing it's a hardware
problem,
but what?

Thanks, Dave.

Thanks Bill,
Unfortunately my pc does not have any cards. Sound, video, network, etc, all
run off the motherboard.
I have tried adding in a working 32mb video card, but still get the same
response. I have also been running
a RAM test "DocMemory" for the last 10 hours & that hasn't picked up any RAM
problems. If you can think
of any other areas I should be looking at, I'd really appreciate it.
Dave.

"bill" wrote in message
...
try taking all cards out of computer except video card then see if you can
load xp or what ever you want if that works install each card one at a
time
bill
"David Barratt" wrote in message
...
Hi all,

I just got myself a used IPEX PC, Pentium III 866, 256mb RAM, 20gb HDD.
It came with no operating system. I have tried installing XP, '98 & ME
on
this box.
Each time, the installation almost finishes & asks for my login &
password,
which I provide, usually no problems there, but when I get to the stage
where it
detects new devices, I get the choice to install automatically or select
from a list.
Once I have clicked on ok to continue, the PC just freezes.
No mouse movement, can't Alt, Ctrl & Del. I have to press the reset
button
on the box. Once reset, it goes through the motions of finishing
installation again,
then freezes again.

Any ideas? This is really frustrating. I'm guessing it's a hardware
problem,
but what?

Thanks, Dave.

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 12:15:37 +1100, "David Barratt"
wrote:

Thanks Bill,
Unfortunately my pc does not have any cards. Sound, video, network, etc, all
run off the motherboard.
I have tried adding in a working 32mb video card, but still get the same
response. I have also been running
a RAM test "DocMemory" for the last 10 hours & that hasn't picked up any RAM
problems. If you can think
of any other areas I should be looking at, I'd really appreciate it.
Dave.


Similar to removing cards, you might instead use the
motherboard jumpers and bios settings to disable all
features non-essential to booting to desktop. You might
first try clearing CMOS, and if that doesn't help, THEN
disable the features.

Docmemory isn't as good as memtest86, try that instead...
though I doubt it's memory errors.
http://www.memtest86.com