One for "Z" or Rattle probably!
Can a Laptop become allergic to an operating system? ;-)
Before you start laughing!
Had a laptop that needed a complete re-install, (was running xp home) formatted the hard drive, did a full surface scan (no bad sectors) re-installed Xp sp3. Tried to boot, logo screen came on, dots started "walking" then went into shutdown/reboot loop.
Tried hard drive in another Laptop and in my own desktop, in each machine it booted right through to Desktop - no probs! - even disabling ahds in bios and running in native ide mode made no difference.
I admitted defeat and passed it to the local repair shop ;-( . They tested it out with a drive loaded with Vista and one with win7, - no probs, they then tested it with one of their XP drives, same problem, and the original disk also ran ok in their test rig.
So in the end even they are puzzled, and the Lappy is now quite happy with a win 7 installation!
Any thoughts?
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There is a piece of hardware in your suspect lappy mis reporting itself, clearly a device driver is not loading, step by step safe mode could be used to isolate it and I would have reset the BIOS (and probably updated it to the latest). It could also be a failing register in the CPU or a memory issue.
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 12 Jul 12 at 21:15
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I did re-set the bios to default settings, but am always wary of re-flashing them! it was a Dell running bios version AO11.
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Reflashed many, never screwed one up yet.
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Will be a driver issue, some of the early SATA systems were quite difficult to install XP on as you needed to load the drivers before hand.
Have you tried installing XP with SATA changed to IDE mode?
Does it load up in save mode?
I would start by flashing the BIOS too, never messed one up either, although I did once flash a router which decided to give up the ghost after flashing but it was not behaving itself anyway hence flashing it.
I have had laptops like yours in the past which didn't want to work with a specific operating system but always got them working it can just be a pain in the head gasket.
Last edited by: RattleandSmoke on Thu 12 Jul 12 at 21:33
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just lately I`m definitely trying to think too hard and doing myself no-good! ......but if a piece of hardware is mis reporting itself, why is it not throwing up the same symptoms in other o/s`s, and if its a driver loading prob, why doesn`t it manifest in other machines?
I definitely think it must be exactly as you think, but as the "dots" only walk across barely once, it wouldn`t have had chance to load many! - its almost as if it detects xp and computer says "NO", wouldn`t load into any other mode either!
Anyway, its got win 7 now, and is quite happy, ;-) but i like to try and find a reason if things go pear-shaped!
Last edited by: devonite on Thu 12 Jul 12 at 21:36
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Windows 7 etc will have newer basic drivers built in, so when you install it will work better out of the box and give you chance to install the correct drivers.
In your case what you probably need to do to get XP working if flashing the BIOS doesn't work is slip stream your own XP disc by slipping the new drivers onto the CD.
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Vista/7 has no 16 bit device drivers ( it has to chunk 16 bit apps around to make them work in compatibility mode, but it can't load 16 bit device drivers). XP is full of 16 bit stuff.
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>> it has to chunk 16 bit apps around to make them work in compatibility mode, but it can't load 16 bit device drivers
The great term for this was 'thunk' I seem to recall.
As both Rattle and Zero says, your old laptop needed drivers available during install/boot to work on the hardware of the laptop. The OEM version originally installed would have had these but a vanilla XP CD did not.
During a manual install of Windows you'd have the chance to provide the drivers needed for the install to work.
Now it is running a more modern OS.... forget about it.
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Indeed the term is "thunking" but I didn't want to have to explain layers and conversion dlls so I used the term chunking as it sounds simple and plausible!
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And this is probably one of the reasons the Microsoft rule only been allowed to use the CD that came with your PC to reinstall Windows if it is an OEM licence.
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Ah! right chaps! - thanks!
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Allergic Laptop! - Zero
