i am helping my friend install Win XP pro on his comp. the (80GB SATA) drive is new and i tested it with the western digital HDD utility CD. after a full test, it came back with no errors. after that, i used the same utility to write the drive with zeroes. after that, i used the win XP pro disk to install windows. it wanted to format first, so i said ok. the formatting keeps freezing at 100% if one does the regular format and 20% if one does the quick format. why does this happen and how can i fix it? thanks in advance for any help or helpful comments

[Edited on January 18, 2008 at 4:33 PM. Reason : ]

1/18/2008 4:32:53 PM

press F6 to install drivers

1/18/2008 4:40:57 PM

^if he didn't have the SATA drivers i doubt he'd make it to the format screen...

try destroying the partition and recreating it

[Edited on January 18, 2008 at 4:44 PM. Reason : .]

1/18/2008 4:44:03 PM

^ i have tried deleting the partition in the utility and redoing the format a few times

BTW way, it recognizes the correct size of the drive, if that matters

[Edited on January 18, 2008 at 4:47 PM. Reason : ]

1/18/2008 4:46:37 PM

Quote :

"if he didn't have the SATA drivers i doubt he'd make it to the format screen..."

probably, but its worth a shot and its easy to do

1/18/2008 4:48:44 PM

http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/

1/18/2008 4:50:30 PM

^ i couldn't get that CD started.. it might have locked up, or i might have just not used properly. do you just put the disc in and it loads the software into RAM automatically?

[Edited on January 19, 2008 at 8:17 AM. Reason : ]

1/19/2008 8:16:43 AM

now it sometimes gets past the format, sometimes not. he was 4 sticks of ram, and has tried the install 4 times, each time with just one different stick of ram. any ideas as to what is going wrong? would lack of power be an issue? he has 2 massive video cards that look power-hungry

2/1/2008 10:55:50 AM

slave it on another computer and format it that way.

2/1/2008 11:29:05 AM

uh, if it gets past the format ONCE, whats the problem?

Is it failing at some other point after that?

2/1/2008 12:02:17 PM

sounds like an issue i was having, something about the drives not being recognized correctly or the size or something, i really don't recall exactly, but it was doing the same thing

fix it in the bios....

[Edited on February 1, 2008 at 3:11 PM. Reason : s]

2/1/2008 3:08:07 PM

^^ yes, it fails in the middle of the windows install if it completes formatting

2/1/2008 7:31:48 PM