Sheesh... been working with PCs for 15 years but beginning to think I'm in over my head here! Here's the situation:

wanted to load Win XP Pro onto Compaq with Win XP Home Ed. ... XP Home wouldn't let me load XP Pro cuz it didn't have the latest updates and says it was an older version ... I reformatted HD using 98 CD (box has no floppy...grrr!) ... using just 1 primary dos partition for 160 gb HD ... try to install Win XP Pro but it goes to blue screen with session 3 initialization error message after the drivers load. I then backed out and loaded Win 2000 Pro... it loaded fine and ran so I then tried to upgrade to the Win XP Pro... but the setup started skipping files like crazy. Then attempted to do a full install of Win XP but, again, blue screen.

Going nuts trying to get this darned box working. I've never had so much trouble loading an OS. Would someone PLEASE throw me a rope here!?

Thanks a bunch!
Tee

Hey there teemee,

Out of interest what made you boot from a 98 CD to format the drive?

I recommend that you boot from your windows xp pro disk and delete the existing partition and then recreate it. Once done format and start the windows installation.

If you get constant hanging/crashing during the installation then it can be one of 3 things:

1. Faulty hard drive (most common)
2. Faulty RAM
3. Temperature issues.

If it does crash when you follow the above instructions could you post any error message or the symptons when it crashes. (e.g what point during installation)

If you get another blue screen could you write out the first line for us so we can determine what could be causing it.

Thanks for the response. In reply, the Win xp pro disk wouldn't boot... it would load drivers then go right to blue screen with no prompt to format or partition. Since there is no floppy I used an old Win98 CD to get access to the drive, reformatted then tried the winxp pro... blue screen again.

since my original post I finally came to my senses (after a short break and more coffee...LOL) and realized that I hadn't partitioned the 160 GB drive correctly. I loaded winxp pro and when prompted I was able to delete the existing partition and create 2 partitions (c and d). Win XP Pro is now installed and running fine.

Phew!! I was ready to get the hammer out if this hadn't worked.

Thanks again for your response. I will file it in my big blue book of PC troubleshooting.

Tee

You're welcome Tee (coffee huh, that stuff has magical powers!!).

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