I've been trying to fix this on and off for a few days now and figured it would be a good time to ask for help.

The problem is this: I boot from the windows cd into setup, and setup starts to load all of the drivers, and then when it gets to "Setup is starting windows" it freezes. At first I thought it might have been a problem with a pretty old scratched up cd, but I've tried it with windows 2000, xp home, and xp pro, all the versions of windows I have avalible to me currently, and it does the exact same thing.

To make things even more complicated, I managed to install slackware 10 fine, and then install xp pro through vmware. So I have absolutely no idea what the problem could possibly be.

Any help would be appreciated. And no, I'm not going to stick with linux. I can't get the onboard sound to work, ati drivers are a mess, and all I want to do is play WoW, it's been weeks!

Do you have any fickle hardware that you might be able to remove during setup?  Try removing anything extra (printer, scanner, any USB drives that you won't use, sound card (disable in BIOS if possible) -- anything extra) and running setup.  There may be a driver issue.

I had the same problem, except it took forever to load drivers.

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=13763.msg140323#msg140323 date=1136333919]
Do you have any fickle hardware that you might be able to remove during setup?  Try removing anything extra (printer, scanner, any USB drives that you won't use, sound card (disable in BIOS if possible) -- anything extra) and running setup.  There may be a driver issue.
[/quote]
Just tried this, it continues to do the same thing.

Is this in text mode or graphical mode?

Don't be too bothered by vmware -- it exposes a virtual machine to Windows Setup, not the actual hardware.

Also, try using the Windows XP Setup boot disks if you're booting from CD.  I know this is a stretch, but I'm grasping for straws at what it could be.

Have you tried your CDs on another machine?

Make sure your memory is fine, I had this same problem and slackware would install and all. It wasn't my memory however, it was a jumper on my motherboard which was set wrong by default.

[quote author=MyndFyre link=topic=13763.msg140341#msg140341 date=1136336588]
Is this in text mode or graphical mode?

Don't be too bothered by vmware -- it exposes a virtual machine to Windows Setup, not the actual hardware.

Also, try using the Windows XP Setup boot disks if you're booting from CD.  I know this is a stretch, but I'm grasping for straws at what it could be.

Have you tried your CDs on another machine?
[/quote]
Well, the cds obviously worked if I used them to install it even if it was through vmware.

As for the boot disks, I'll give that a try when I can, the only other computer in the house with a floppy drive is my moms and the program that creates them doesn't seem interersted in running on it.

[quote author=Warrior link=topic=13763.msg140351#msg140351 date=1136338440]
Make sure your memory is fine, I had this same problem and slackware would install and all. It wasn't my memory however, it was a jumper on my motherboard which was set wrong by default.
[/quote]
The memory is new, I'll try to test it in my brother's computer or something, though I'm not sure if his board supports pc3200. Any idea what the jumper that did it for you was?

[quote author=Hitmen link=topic=13763.msg140360#msg140360 date=1136340268]
The memory is new, I'll try to test it in my brother's computer or something, though I'm not sure if his board supports pc3200. Any idea what the jumper that did it for you was?
[/quote]

If you haven't installed XP on your new memory, switch back to the old memory and see if it works. If it doesn't, you have eliminated one possible cause.

[quote author=dxoigmn link=topic=13763.msg140363#msg140363 date=1136340533]
[quote author=Hitmen link=topic=13763.msg140360#msg140360 date=1136340268]
The memory is new, I'll try to test it in my brother's computer or something, though I'm not sure if his board supports pc3200. Any idea what the jumper that did it for you was?
[/quote]

If you haven't installed XP on your new memory, switch back to the old memory and see if it works. If it doesn't, you have eliminated one possible cause.
[/quote]
I agree.  Also, you might try Windows Memory Diagnostic to check your memory, and also compare the vendor of your memory with your video card.  I bought 2 sticks of 512mb that were some off-brand (I have an NVidia 6800 GT).  Evidently the off-brand was incompatible with my video card; WMD ran fine through two full passes without incident, but booting any DirectX BSOD'd  me.

Today I tried with the old memory, didn't work. Switched video card out, didn't work. My floppy drive doesn't work (apparently), so I haven't been able to try the setup boot disks yet, I really hope it does though. I still have no idea what the hell the problem is. I'm going to try changing the cdrom drive or something, I'm running out of ideas.