What does this sound like – hardware issue? Software issue?
Here are my system (laptop) specs. It's an MSI 1039, and I purchased this less than one month ago.
Turion 64 MT-40 2.2GHz
1GB single-channel Crucial RAM
100GB Toshiba 5400RPM 16MB cache hard disk
ATI Radeon x1600 256 MB PCI Express video card
Microstar MP54G4 Wireless-G Adapter, IEEE 802.11 b/g MiniPCI
When I try to reinstall Windows from my (legitimate) Windows XP Pro, it gets to “Setup is starting Windows,” and then it just sits there. I cannot press ctrl+alt+delete to restart at this point. I let it sit there for 20 minutes, and it still does nothing. I disabled every setting in the BIOS I could find, which was only AMD PowerNow and Legacy USB support. There was not option to disable anything else, like Plug and Play.
HOWEVER, the strange things is that if I press F5 when the Windows setup starts (booting off the CD), I can install Windows just fine using the i486 C-Step setup. But I do not want to do this because then I have to configure everything manually.
I thought it may be a RAM issue, so I ran memtest from GRUB which was included with Ubuntu 6.06. I let memtest make two passes through the RAM, and it found no errors. Maybe I need to run it more than twice?
I then booted into the Windows XP recovery console from CD (isungin the i486 setup), and then I ran chkdsk /R, and it said it found some bad sectors. I then proceeded to run HDD Regenerator (demo version) to double check this, but strangely that program found no bad sectors. Maybe Windows repaired the bad sectors, or maybe it remapped them...
Another strange thing is that I can boot into Ubuntu (which is on another partition) with no problems. But, if I try to boot into Knoppix 4, it simply freezes – every time – it tries to run autodetection on eth0.
I've even tried removing the WLAN card, and I also tried swapping the RAM stick to the other slot.
So I have tried everything, but nothing has fixed the problem of booting into the (normal) Windows setup. I would just use Linux, but unfortunately I have to be able to run Windows for school and work.
Please post something if you have any ideas. Thanks in advance.
*EDIT*
Let me add that when I first got the computer, I was able to install Windows from (the same) CD just fine. Although, the black and gray cables were attached incorrectly to the wireless card.
I've also tried resetting the BIOS to its optimal settings.