Installing Win 2000, stuck at "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration"

The problem may be related to the CPtC's ACPI support. I have one, but it's still running Win98, and currently is at another site, or I'd check the following information about BIOS settings out. See if the information here helps.

Jim

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@jimw wrote:
The problem may be related to the CPtC's ACPI support. I have one, but it's still running Win98, and currently is at another site, or I'd check the following information about BIOS settings out. See if the information here helps.

Jim

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I didn't quite reply to your msg. I disabled BIOS power management and tried different BIOS options such as the IRQ 11 lock for the docking station. There was, unfortunately, no one setting in BIOS to disable ACPI, so far as I can tell. Pressing F7, or F6 for that matter, is ignored.

This is getting irritating.

I've moved up to BIOS Rev. A14. I've tried booting with and without the dock/port replicator. Booting from the Windows 2000 boot image floppy does the same thing. I've booted from the HD as well, and even stuck a Windows XP in to see what it would do. (Same thing!)

Many sites suggest pressing F5 at bootup to get a HAL selection menu. This does nothing, no matter how I time the pressing of the button.

This site suggested going to "txtsetup.sif" and, under, [ACPIOptions], setting ACPIEnable=0. No luck, but I enjoyed the struggle of finding and extracting edit.com to get the task done.

Microsoft.com

will provide Microsoft's take on this problem. One common idea was to find the Debug version of ntdetect.com; there doesn't seem to be one in Windows 2000.

In every case, the system locks up such that I have to press and hold Power to shut it off.

Suggestions, anyone?

Removing the laptop from the docking bay was definitely a good idea. Are there any other devices you can remove - USB or PCMCIA cards? It still sounds like it's getting stuck in the "hardware detect" phase, judging from the way you have to power the machine down.

It looks like the "Win2K Readiness Advisor" is no longer available from Microsoft. I also tried searching for the Latitude CPtC in their hardware compatibility guide, and didn't find anything. Dell's reinstall guides for Win2K on the CPtC don't include anything but a few devices.

Sigh. Maybe there's a message here!

Jim

No, no PC cards or USB. Since you mentioned it, though, I did try pulling the HD. It didn't change the end result, but it's nice to know it wasn't the diagnostic partition or MBR or who-knows-what.

I don't know enough about hardware detection to know what else I might disable. I think I've tried everything there is on the BIOS menus, even the COM and LPT.

Dell claims that this model is compatible, so there must be something wedged in a gear somewhere... so to speak. But where?  Acting on a tip from the Bay Wolf site, I reset the BIOS to factory settings with Alt+F.  The hard drive was out.

I wonder if pulling the "reserve" battery would change anything.

It would be wretched if this machine couldn't be upgraded. It's the last machine in the church office with Windows 98. This copy of Win 2K was bought some time ago specifically for this machine. It would be a waste to stick it back on the shelf.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

< this space formerly occupied by a not-very-good suggestion that I later decided to delete.>

Message Edited by akahan on 08-26-2004 03:31 AM