Hi All I have a Sony Vaio Notebook,it had Freespire on it which i removed with "active kill disc", i then repartitioned the drive in NTFS and made it Active,the problem i have is that XP Pro will not install.....it goes through the process of copying files needed for Windows but then when it says windows is starting up it freezes and the screen goes black...itdoesnt evengoto the licence agreement screen (F8) orlet me pick a partition to install it to, i have several other harddrives with XP on but the system will just not boot into XP but yet i can install Win98se and its fine, the XPCD that i use is fine i use it all the time plus i have others to use, is it something to do with the system...being that itoriginally had Freespire installed or could it or could i have taken something off the HDD that i shouldnt of with Active Killdisc, whatever it is....its something that Win98 doesnt need because that install's fine. Thanks your help will be much appreciated Steve

1stknight Posts 339 Re: Trouble installing Win XP OEM Was this post helpful ? Morning Steve I do not have your mb information. So I cannot direct you to the appropriate resource. Ecxcept Sony of course. Your motherboard may have a OEM Sata included on your system. Can you boot to safe mode after the install? There should be no problem with xp's loader if you are at least getting to the windows splash screen since you have repartitioned your hard drive. If you could post your notebooks model number this would go along way to us in these forums helping you out. Or posting your log information as sugguested below. More then likely you will need to have a floppy disk available with the Sata drivers present. My geuss is the chipset is an intel. And you can get the latest version from www.intel.com and search for the latest download version. Otherwise you need the signed drivers from Nvidia.com You can see what is happening by pressing *f8* prior to the windows splash screen. Click on enable boot logging. Then booiting to your system cd then printing out or copying your %windir%svcpack log file. And your %windir%\system32\windsu[pdate log file. There are many posts about troubleshooting Sata within these forums. In other words the Xp solution center. More then likely you may need to restore to your previous boot point if this is your only production system. Are you using media center edition? There is a post by myself that addressing input devices and fixes problems with media center. If not ignore this portion Easier to/integrate this Sata chipset into ayour xpcd image then burn to a new cd. Advantage you can have a new reliable boot restore cd. Disadvange learning to slipstream. Tools like lite exist but these images are nort supported by microsoft. Any way hope this helps you out Keith

hiya Keith,thanks for your reply. its a laptop mate,there is no options for sata in the bios,model no is PCG-GRX415MP. i dont even get to splash screen, its as though it doesnt recognise the screen,i've just tried to load Win 2000 aswell,didnt work.Whats happening is that when you boot from os cd it loads all files required which it would do even if there was no hdd even plugged in but when it comes to the section that supposed to say install or repair ect or press "F8" for licence agreement it goes to a black screen and the only way to do anything after that is hit power button,it just freezes,it only does it with WIN 2000 & XP,Win98 loads ok so i'm presuming that there is some sort of file system or root/boot/directory ect missing but i dont know because i've never had this happen before,is it that i may need a utillities disc if so where would i aquire it from,cant seem to find a download anywhere,i've got every boot cd going now lol,tried everything,i'm at a loss. Many Regards Steve ps i do not have a floppy drive and the specs are not shown in the bios.

Another idea is that maybe Win2000or XP doesnt recognise the HDD where as Win98 does,this being that after the os discs has loaded the files the system stops with only the power light lit up and the only option i have is to shut it down using power button but as i said Win98 installs fine which is no use because the client wants XP installed. Many Thanks Steve

Anybody!!! Please help, i'm taking it that this is not a common problem.Steve