During install: setup formatting at 0% for > 1 hr

[ptrns]

i am trying to install xp prof on an hp dv5000 laptop. i created the lone c: partition and started the formatting, but it's been ~1 hr and the progress is still at 0%. i've installed xp before on different comps and it has never taken this long just to get past 0%. thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[DeadlyPredator]

Very bad, probably dead HDD, you should test it with a hard drive test software, look for "Hiren's Boot CD" on google, you have everything you need and more.... You can try too to zero completly the hard drive with softwares on this boot CD. Sometime you can corrupt a HDD and need to reset it completly.

 

[ptrns]

thanks for the quick reply -- yes, i am currently running the 'primary HDD long test' -- estimated 88 minutes (~95 GB HDD) -- the progress bar goes to 10% within a few minutes but it has remained there for ~40 min.

don't know if this helps -- before my attempted install, the laptop had been able to start up and run ok, but it was very slow upon start-up and also during use. i don't know how much of this sluggish behavior would be attributable to a dead HDD. i disabled the cpu-greedy antivirus software and programs that ran upon start-up, but the laptop still ran very slowly (~1 GB RAM), so i decided to re-install xp.

also, if the HDD is corrupted, wouldn't a format during xp re-installation be enough? what else does a 'reset' of the HDD do? -- and also which specific tools on Hiren's? (thanks for the link!)

 

[DeadlyPredator]

In Hiren's you have utilities depending of your HDD brand, seatools for seagate, maxblast for maxtor, datalifegard for WD... and usually there is a "erase", "zero", "low-level format", "wipe-out"... option. What the reset do? On a HDD data which indicate how the disk is splitted, what kind of partitons, ... and sometime you can corrupt that very low-level data, making very strange problems. As exemple, I did a very bad operation with partition magic. My HDD was detected by the BIOS, but not by windows xp setup program nor fdisk! So I had to do a low-level format and everything was fixed. But in your case I don't think it's the problem. Check your hard disk for bad sectors with testing softwares. If it find any, it's a bad hdd. Bad sectors may cause a lot of misses / retries when the HDD read so it may slow down the system.

 

[ptrns]

"Bad sectors may cause a lot of misses / retries when the HDD read so it may slow down the system. "

actually, this makes perfect sense -- i'll play around with hiren's but i think i'll be looking for a new HDD -- thank you very much for your help!!