bumfuzzaled

[papadcof]

ok, here's a good one.........

Dell system 300 optiplex gxa
300 cpu
256 meg ram

win98se needed to be reinstalled, at cd-key screen "est. time remaining 30-60 min"
next screen tells me 343 mins.!! oh no!!
disconnectd pwr from box, opened box and disconnected ALL cables and pwr wires from hd drives and mobo. pulled and reseated all pci cards, mem chips,reconnected all and tried again.

again, (same place as before) time changed from 30-60 est to 343 mins est.!!! And, yes it is taking that long, 4 hrs into install with still 1 hr to go.

started all this with a clean format and booted from a clean win98se floppy, so any thoughts, ideas, or help in any way be appreciated. thx

[peekaboo]

do you get a warning that something was not detected (smartx or something like that) and that without it the setup will take a long time?

why don't you just let it run for 4-5 hours and be done with it?

[papadcof]

nope, no warnings of any kind. as of now , i dont know what else i can do but let it run.
but, it's really messing with my head trying to figure out whats wrong

[glc]

You need to run hard drive and memory diagnostics. Defective memory or hard drives can cause exactly these symptoms.

[edfair]

You might want to try the boot floppy with the fat32 fdisk and try fdisk and format from there. It may show up problems there that are affecting the rest of the install.

[papadcof]

I Did. I Booted From A Win98se Floppy, Fdisked, Deleted All Hard-drives, Rebooted From Floppy, Re-fdisked, Made A New Drive, Rebooted, And Then Formatted Drive, Rebooted From Floppy, Copyed Win98se Onto Hard Drive And Then Tried To Run Setup From There. Got The Same Results As Trying To Run It From Cdrom

[peekaboo]

it was smartdrv not smartx (i forgot).
anyway, read this and see if you think it'll speed things up for you.

[glc]

Smartdrv will not help with installing Win98. I still think you have bad ram or a bad hard drive - have you run diagnostics yet?

www.memtest.org - make the boot floppy. This will test your ram.

You can download diagnostics for the hard drive from the hard drive manufacturer (WD, Seagate, Maxtor, IBM/Hitachi, etc.) - same thing, boot floppy maker.

[papadcof]

I ran Memtest and Powermax, all tests showed no errors. I replaces all ram sticks with known good sticks, did'nt help. i guess try replacing HD with known good one next. would flakey PS cause these symptoms also? anyway, thanks for all replys and suggestions

[glc]

Have you tried using a different Windows CD?

[papadcof]

yep, tried that too

[GaryRouth]

Did you by any chance change how the drive was mounted in the case recently?

. . . I remember a really odd repair that a fellow PC Mech tech, "Toaster", had several years ago -- the system ran terribly slowly for no obvious reason. -- In that strange case, the hard drive had taken a dislike to having been mounted upside down [opposite of the position it had ran in for years and years]. Once the drive was put back into it's former position, it ran fine again.

Of course, hard drives have come a long way since that thread was first posted.

Just to see, if you have a copy of the Dell Diagnostics around on a floppy, you could test the CD-drive itself, too. I think it also has a test for the IDE controllers, in case something's up with the motherboard. Not sure the PII 300 is much to worry about, I've yet to see a dead one (seems like the rest of the system usually dies before that processor gives up the ghost).

Interested to see how this one comes out.
. . . Gary