This is a post to help all of those people on the internet that have had or are having the same problem I did. Simply this: I went to install windows and could not get past the \"Setup is Detecting Hardware\" screen. This is frustrating because the only way to reinstall windows is if you can get past this screen (in theory).
I started with what could be the possible causes of the problem:
1) Bad cable to hard disk (I had changed the one in the computer I had now) or a bad hard disk.
2) Possibly caused by Fedora Core 2 being installed on the same drive.
3) Possibly bad windows XP disk.
4) Something else.
I\’m a try the easiest thing first kind of guy, and for me that was testing the windows XP disk. It turned out the disk was fine. Next Test.
The cable was next, so I tried swapping cables. Same problem. Tried putting the hard drive in an identical computer. Same problem. So we do know it\’s something to do with the hard drive, which we had suspected anyway based on our next guess that it would be 2, the fedora install.
Well, thats just no good. The only thing i could think of doing to try to get past this was to remove the linux partitions using a linux recovery disk. To do this I got a copy of this ISO cd image:
Once in there, I ran fdisk, and deleted all the partitions. Actually to tell you the truth, I tried deleting just the linux ones, but ran into problems when I went to run FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Turns out that they still couldn\’t fix it quite right, and I wanted to be working again at 100%. I guess you could say I kind of gave up.
Needless to say, I now believe I have windows working on this box again, and that I shouldn\’t have anymore problems. Let me leave a few more notes to myself so I never try this again at MSA:
1) Drive Image Doesn\’t Support EXT3 (at least not the version we have).
2) RIS Doesn\’t support multiple partitions (go figure)
3) Life it seems doesn\’t want MSA to run linux.
Please remember these things Justin, otherwise your going to go down the same path you know you\’ve been down time and time again. Each time you get closer. Each time ends in heart break.
Maybe I should get Norton Ghost ;-).
Comments on this entry are closed.
Crap! I bet that means my Fedora Core 2 install that logs onto MSA's active directory server is gone.
Oh well. I'm pretty sure I remember how to do it if you think it's worth having Linux on the new student computers.
yep all gone
They did it…I can't tell you who, but they did it. You know M$…I've already said too much…