hardware setup not responding

[denparb]

Hello all, i am having a problem installing Win Me. I had to fdisk and format my comp cause i could not get it to start up at all. Now when i go to reinstall Win Me, between 10-16 minutes left in install, it will freeze up while it is searching for hardware. When i hit ctraltdel it shows searching for hardware not responding and its pretty much done right there, i have to reset. I have tried pretty much everything i seen on the microsoft knowledge page article 262381, not even sure if its the right thing to try or not but i did. Anyway im hoping someone can help me with this problem it is quite frustrating lol. Ive had the comp for 2 years with Win Me and never any real probs lol. The only thing i have added in the last while would be a router for use with my ps2 and comp. It came with an install disc but wouldnt fully install so i just did it on the website. Ive only had router couple days. But i noticed a couple things happening before i got router such as freezing the odd time during startup, or not shutting down properly. Anyway thx for reading and i would like to thank all who may be able to help me in advance, pcmech has so far so plzzz 1 more time lol (until the next time lol) thx chow.

[ktkendall]

Time to strip that PC down to bare minimum compenents just to get Windows loaded than add 1 hardware device back at a time till you find the problem 1. One other good peice of advice is right after each successful load of new device and succesful bootup, do a scanreg and save before shutting down, and adding next device, then if the next device hoses everything up you can remove it and do a scanreg /restore to that last good registry save so you don't have to start all over again...

[denparb]

thanks for the help kendall.So what exactly should i disconnect and is there any certain order, seems my harddrive,floppy drive and cd rom work cause it reads the windows cd and startup disks and my sound and video are integrated so not sure how to deal with that, only card i have i think is my network card which ill try first. And im not sure how to use the regedit thing but that i can figure out.

[ktkendall]

In your case then I would disable the sound in the BIOS and pull the network card for now and be sure the BIOS settings are not what is causing the problem. I actually disable everything I am not using from the BIOS like the serial ports, and the parallel port because I figure why have them load and take up an IRQ if I'm never going to use them...You don't really need to go into regedit, just type scanreg in the run box and when prompted to save, click yes...Sounds like you do have a hardware device going bad on that motherboard or a card or something and that is what is causing your original problem that led you to reloading your OS..