Installing XP and it just stops

[fourdollarbill]

I just found a used MSI board (815EP-Pro) With a p3 1100/100. I blew it clean and installed on a 250watt psu, 15 gig WD drive, kingston 256 meg. double side and an ATI brand AGP video. When I first plugged it all in, this set up ran the pre installed windows 98 on the hard drive with 168 megs of pc100.
I tried to install XP Home and once it quit at copying files @ 35% the it quit various times @ 9%. Then i switched to the kingston 256 pc133. I set the bios to see the correct memory and also tried the auto. It still stops loading at 9%, Now it quits at "getting ready to install windows". I tried loading bios fail safe defaults and changing the boot to cd rom. Now it stops every time at the "getting ready to load windows screen. I must admitt it did not stay on long before i rebooted each time, maybe 10 minutes max.
Any suggestions?

[GaryRouth]

A good first step would be to see if it can run simple diagnostics, when booting from a floppy diskette = that will tell you if the hardware is at least sound enough to run continuously.

You can use MemTest86+ to test the memory http://www.memtest.org
You can use diagnostics from the hard drive manufacturer's website to test the hard drive.

Depending on where the motherboard came from, it certainly might have been thrown out because it was damaged. Bad sectors on a hard drive, or faulty system memory, could produce your symptoms as well. And the quality of the 250wt power supply could be a suspect too. . . .

Then there's the possibility of overheating - you'll want to check the temps and fans.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[fourdollarbill]

Thank you Gary
I will try these. I just borrowed a HD from an idle PC to try. I am going to try the tests you advised. The power supply has been questionable from the get go so I will try an idle PSU.
The board was pulled from an upgraded unit, the person knows it worked very well. But then again???

I'll will update, thanks, Gary