Computer Hangs During SetUp

[Maxwell]

I've been trying to fix this last night and this morning...

I've got this old Dell Dimension 2400 that I'm trying to bring to life again. It had been running fine for a long time, but then the HDD crapped out a while back. New HDD in there (thanks, DrPop), and I begin the setup process.

Throw in the OS install disk, and everything is well. Setup starts, runs like it has any of the several other times I've reinstalled the OS. However, when it gets to the part where the machine requires the restart for the first time, it hangs. Complete freeze during the reboot process, requiring a hard shut-down.

One time, during the course of my attempts to fix this, I got this error:
driver_irql_not_less_or_equal

But every other time, it just hangs, freezes, and goes no further. Can anyone help me figure this out?

[Beerdrinker]

Pardon me for asking...But you did format the drive before installing anything rigth? If no...That´s the problem...

If yes....I´ll bet it to be some sort of driver problem...

[Maxwell]

Pardon me for asking...But you did format the drive before installing anything rigth? If no...That´s the problem...

If yes....I´ll bet it to be some sort of driver problem...

Yep. Quick format, full format, both. And I've removed every non-essential piece of hardware in there. Currently I only have the HDD, optical drive, power supply, mouse, keyboard (those last two are the Dell ones that came with the computer), and monitor connected.

[STMahlberg]

Dell Dimension 2400, hmmm... are you sure you're putting enough coal into the firebox?

hehehehe Sorry, I couldn't resist. I had two of these rigs one of which still runs and the other was a fickle son of a gun that wouldn't recognize any HDD I put into it. I finally gave up and tossed it in the trash.

In my opinion, I'm not sure it's worth the power to run honestly; I don't pay for power where I live so that is the only reason I run mine. I know it's another core but it just takes so long to run a task on it.

I'm just throwing this out there... Is the OS the original that came with it? If not I'm wondering if maybe there isn't enough RAM for it to load or perhaps the swap page file is too small for it to move instructions around?

[STMahlberg]

On a bit of a side note, the one thing I do love about Dell is the Dell Partition that they put on their machines. The Ctrl-F11 key combo puts everything back to new again; it's a great feature that I would like to recreate something similar on my systems.

Although it doesn't really do you much good when the HDD gives up the ghost.

[Maxwell]

This is the original OS install disk that was sent to me with the computer. Nothing fancy here...

And power is actually pretty cheap here. That's not too much of a concern for me. However, I can get this box to spit out ~8k/day, which is why I want to get it back up and running again.

[STMahlberg]

Okay, I just had a thought that might prove to be useful. You said that you got the HDD from DrPop for the Dell.

Something similar happened to me, I was installing Windows Vista on one of my new rigs using an old HDD. It would run setup and format the HDD just fine but when it tried to boot it would lockup the system for no apparent reason. It retried about 4 times with the same results.

My solution was, I bought a brand new HDD put it in the rig and tried reinstalling the OS; it installed and fired up the first time.

I have no idea why it wouldn't work with the old drive, there just seemed to be something the system didn't like about it.

[Maxwell]

With the driver_irql_not_less_or_equal error (I got it again...) I get the following error sequence:

0x000000D1 (0x000001F7, 0x00000007, 0x00000001, 0xF755F64B)

[Fire$torm]

1) Double check the jumper(s) on the HDD. Many IDE drives do not require the presence of a jumper for a single "Master" drive while others do.

2) Boot the Dell with a Linux Live-CD like Ubuntu. Run gparted (a partition manager) to remove ALL partitions, including that friggin hidden Dell partition, form the HDD and format it as either fat32 or NTFS.

3) Do NOT use the Dell installation disk. Use a retail Windows install CD. If you do not have one for the version of Windows you have the license for let me know and I can Rapidshare an iso of it for you or you can DL it from me via FTP.

Edit: What is the make and model of the HDD?

[Maxwell]

I'm currently working off the theory that this is not a HDD issue - because I've tried three different HDDs in there.

I'm also beginning to think that this may be some other hardware failure - I'm going to start futzing with things later today.

@FS: Thanks for those thoughts: No jumpers, and I'm going to try a real XP disk in a while.