Hi guys,
I have a computer at home that had Windows 2000 but then I tried to reinstall it and half way through 'Finishing The Setup' The computer restarts itself. Then it starts the process all over again. So thats 1 problem. The second problem is, I had to install 98SE on the machine (works quite well.) I installed it fine and decided I didnt like the font they used for the start button and icons etc. So I went to appearences in the Display Control Panel and set all the fonts to Tahoma (The font 2000 uses) and saved it as my own theme. I restarted the machine and all the fonts are Times New Roman, which looks even worse!! Wots going on??
Olikicksmacs
Did you save the theme?
i did
oli
I don't know what to tell you, except to try ResHacker.
Well can anyone solve my other problem? It gets right to the end of installing 2000 (at the finishing setup stage) and then the computer just turns off and restarts and goes through the whole process again!
Oli
what happens after it goes through it a second time ... :?
TOM
...it was because of something in the BIOS or Master Boot Record. Do you have Linux, BSD or another OS installed aside from windows?
in answer to tom's question, it just keeps doing it. If i left it on for 3 days it would still be doing it!
And in answer to performamans question, i formatted the hard drive before i put it on.
HELP!
Oli
Did you use a formatting tool that booted from a floppy?
Also, is it Fat32 or NTFS?
I used the windows 98se DOS bootdisk from bootdisk.com. I think it formats it as FAT32.
Oli
the best thing i could think 2 do is mak a bakup of all of all ur important stuff (doc;s ect.) and format tha sucker, then install 2000
Read the above posts!!! I've already tried formatting and installing 3 times, and it just does the same thing!!!!!
mybad, at least i tried tho
anyways, i've sometimes had trouble putting say, XP on ME, or 98. don't kno if it's the same thing tho.... even tho xp was built on 2000 no klue, but sorry forthe inconvience.....
After reading my last post, i now realise that I am a grumpy old bugger (a bit hard at 14) and am sorry for shouting in text. I really do need help!! And performaman, what is the conclusion to your Aha! post. It seems like you may know what is rong
Oli
Rip out everything other then the graphics card, a stick of ram, and the harddrive.
Try that and install
Ok then! Tell you the results in a few hours!
Oli
Hang on. Thats all it has in it anyway!!! except a cd drive (which i would need to install 2000) so theres no point!
oli;
when you install Windows and it restarts the computer (it will
do this many times during the install) you must monitor the re-
start. When the computer reboots the screen will go blank, then
it will BRIEFLY display an option reading...
Select an option
1. Install Windows
2. Go To Windows
You MUST select option #2. and then the install will continue
on its way normally. If you select option #1. you will cycle
back through the "install" loop again as you have found out.
Funny that this comes up as I have just had to do a complete
clean out, reformat and reload of my Windows (Me) due to a
problem with some files being "broken". This happens with Win
products with use so you WILL be reinstalling Windows again
some day.
No need to take out any parts, cards, etc. As a matter of fact,
you MUST have ALL of the hardware that you will be needing such
as graphics cards, memory, drives, printers, scanners, modems,
etc. already installed so that Windows can find and configure for
their presence and use during setup. This is much easier and more
reliable that adding them after the install. windows will set
everything up under the "Plug and Play" install/setup wizard.
Hope this helps a little.
There is no option!?!?!?! performaman, i need the answer to the AHA!! post.
Ta
Oli
I had the same problem with Windows 2000. I got around it by booting off of a Knoppix CD, mounting the hard drive, repartitioning it and formatting it with NTFS, then going from there. If the drive is FAT32 it can cause issues. Knoppix is freely available off the net, burn it to CD and have at it. www.knoppix.org
The Czar
doesnt Win2K have a rudimentary partitioning tool in it's install? use that to delete the entire partition table and start from scratch.
CCC
I know i am responding to a 3 week old posting, but I don't want other people misled by woogie's post.
First of all, a LOT of modern day accessories (scanners, printers, etc) do NOT want to be hooked up to the computer until their software has already been installed. Quite often, the instrucitons that come with the scanner (or whatever) will say "DO not hook me up until the software install is complete" or "Only hook me up when you are prompted to connect the device during the software install".
As to the restarting of windows, that is TOTALLY wrong (in regards to windows 98se, 2000, xp installs, and if you are booting from the cd's). What I mean is, you install Windows 2000 from the cd, it installs fine, you go away to go do something else. Then the system restarts. While its restarting, just past the post process, it will have 2 options: 1> Boot from HD 2> Boot from CD-Rom. The default is ALWAYS the boot from HD. (One point about this, this is all correct in regards to using the OEM/non-upgrade versions of the Windows installers. I do NOT have/use any upgrade versions of windows, so i *may* be wrong about the upgrades but I that the upgrade verisons of Windows actually are NOT bootable cd's at all). If you are booting from a boot floppy, then disregard what I said since you will always boot to the floppy if its still in the machine and the bios is set to boot to floppy first.
And a VERY good troubleshooting technique is to remove EVERYTHING from the computer except for the barest minmum needed for the install to troubleshoot bizarre install issues. Very often, a scanner, or old network card, or odd video capture card *will* hang up the install of windows and removing them all will allow windows to install properly.
Also, woogie, please try to find a differnet operating system than Windows ME. That is the most bug ridden pile of garbage that Microsoft ever put out. I would rather use the orignal verison of windows 95 than ME. If you use ME, you are correct, you will be formatting/reinstalling every few months. With windows 98, you might need to format/reinstall less often. With 2000/XP, i have seen installs that have lasted a year or 2 and never needed to be reinstalled (i'm talking about workstations, not servers). I only reinstalled windows xp on my home box recently because I put a new big hard drive in it, but the previous install I had on there was about 1 1/2 years old and still worked fine.
One last note, PLug and Play under 2000/XP is very troublefree and reliable so provided you have the drivers, hooking up devices to the system after windows is fully installed should be fairly painless and easy to do.
Hi,
Still no luck
It gets to the part where there it installs windows components (after the installing network components) and gets about 2/3 of the way through then goes to a green screen for about a secont then turns off. When it restarts it asks me if i want to boot from the cd. If I do, it goes back to the dos-type blue screen with the destination drives and all that c**p. If i leave it, it comes onto a windows-type environment then starts to install networking components etc. then does the same thing mentioned earlier in this post. I might not have been clear on my last posts, but this is down to a tee i think! Also, I have tried it with 2 types of windows 2000. Windows 2000 1-2 cpu edition sp2, and Windows 2000 1-2 cpu edition sp3, still no luck. Also I have tried 2 different types of hard drive. A maxtor 40gb and a fujitsu 13gb, both no luck. I know the versions of windows work because I have installed them on my lappy, but swiped it cos it was slow.
By the way, the spec is:
450mhz Pentium III
192mb RAM
40gb Hard Drive
45x CD drive.
I think thats it!
Please help!
Oli
I used a windows 98se boot disk from bootdisk.com to access fdisk. I then deleted the old windows partition and created a new primary dos partition. I did not format it. I then took out the floppy, restarted the pc and let the windows 2000 cd format my hard drive in NTFS.
Oli
To Clear the boot record... Use the command fdisk /mbr it will clear the master boot record completely
What you are describing almost definatly sounds like a hardware problem.
Ram is the easiest to diagnose. Since you have 192 megs of ram, it is guarenteed that you have at least 2 sticks of ram in there.
Remove ONE stick and then try the whole install again. If it craps out, then put the stick of ram that you took out back into the slot where it came from and then remove the other stick of ram and try to install again.
win2k only needs 64 megs of ram to install, so it still should install fine.
If that doesn't work, then it might be a problem video card. Find some other card to stick in there, even if you have to go to the local mom-pop comptuer store and buy a 5 dollar 1 meg trident pci video card (it is enough to allow win 2k to install).
If that *still* doesn't work, then it might be the motherboard or cpu, but thats a last resort.
The green screen clues me that its either memory or video related.
Keep us aprised of whats happening.
The green screen isnt what you think it is. It is like when you install windows 98 in like 16 colours. It is that greeny colour with a cursor, as if the installation program is just running on top of a basic version of windows.
Just a thought
Hmm.. still, try my trick of removing the memory chips and then try the alternative video card. I really think one of those ideas might work. It still sounds like hardware to me.
Woah!
I've just tried it again and i moved the mouse around all the way through and it worked. Thanks for everyones help. Still a bit curious why it happened tho?!?
Oli
wow..
that is freaky, but at least it worked!
There is no reason. It's Windows
didnt want to start a whole new thread for this... WHY, whenever I restart winXP, does the animate moving of windows(whatever its called) checkbox in Display control panel always uncheck itself?? I'm stuck with either having to re-check it on every restart or tolerate that nasty non-animated look... ugh