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XP install problems - I'm now staring at a BLACK SCREEN!!!
Here's the scenario...I'm actually pretty PC savvy but I don't have much experience with Dell's (I build my own). A friend asked me to re-format their Dell though and they had a new version of XP Pro they wanted to use instead of the XP Home that had come with it. I've done tons of re-formats and XP is even easier than most of them so I didn't think it would be tough...and it wasn't for the most part. Everything went fine until the install was pretty much complete and it restarted itself and tried to boot from the CD to complete the installation. It got to the splash screen with the XP logo and then all of a sudden the screen goes black. I thought maybe I missed something so I even re-formatted and re-installed a 2nd time and the same thing happened.
Added info: It's a Dimension 4400 and it was running very slow - hence the reason we decided to do a clean re-install.
So there it is...I would love any suggestions any of
you might have on what I might have done wrong or missed.
Thanks,
Chris
Guys, I appreciate your suggestions but this isn't a standard "please help me install XP" question. I have done a bunch of these in the past with no problems and I am quite familiar with all the standard install procedures. Just to be sure though I did it a second time, this time paying close attention to every detail and I'm quite sure I did it correctly (or at least the same way I did every other successful install). I was thinking this problem had to do with it being a Dell and that maybe I had missed some sort of setting Dell had set up to prevent people from messing with their system. I know how companies like to put their own proprietary stuff on PC's to force you to deal with them when something goes wrong (and charge you for it). I'm sensing from these answer as well as some scanning of the forums that this is not the case though so maybe I'll take a different approach then.
I will try starting it in safe mode and maybe I'll take out the newly installed network card too...it could be conflicting with something too I guess.
Thanks guys,
Chris
- You've probably got this covered, but..
Be sure you have the BIOS set to boot the CD-ROM as the first boot device. Just hitting F12 and selecting the CD-ROM drive (with something else set as first boot device) will sometimes cause things to go flakey.
100mph
1192 Posts
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Posted July 19th, 2004 03:00
Start it in Safe mode, and adjust Display Settings.