Clean OS installation problems

ironfreak247

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Jan 6, 2010
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Doing a clean install of XP Pro on a Toshiba Satellite l35-s1054. I've done this lots of times and it's usually routine. This one is giving me trouble.

When formatting the hard drive, it ALWAYS hangs up at around 83-84% completion. I've left it sitting for hours at a time and it never gets past this point. However, if I restart and use the quick format option, I can install XP like normal. After installing, I had lots of trouble getting the drivers to install. Some of them would hang up, or just shut down midway. I finally went into safe mode and after fighting with it, the drivers installed. Now it's real finicky...it boots up just fine, but lots slower than what I've experienced with other clean installs. When trying to shut it down, everything goes haywire. Sysfader keeps hanging up, explorer has to be force closed, then if it ever gets to the shut down screen, it tries to install Windows updates and just hangs up. I've tried unchecking all the graphics performance options to disable sysfader, but it doesn't help with the hangups. Sometimes it'll recognize a flash drive, other times you have to reinsert it a few times for it to be detected. All the drivers I installed were from the Toshiba website for the correct model, so I don't think it could be the drivers, but I could be wrong.

Is the format hangup the root of this whole problem? Could there possibly be a bad sector or damaged hard drive? If that was true, it doesn't seem like Windows would even install. I've done this lots of times, but I'm no expert. Any advice would be appreciated.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Sounds like the drive has a problem and Windows is unwilling to install to it.

I've occasionally found that otherwise apparently okay secondhand drives fail this particular test. Usually grateful as it saves headaches later.