XP Home Edition freeze on installation

[korsondo]

Hi

My first post and hope I'm posing this problem in the right place.

I have an old IBM thinkpad a22m 2628 (256megs RAM, 40 GIG HD) that I am trying to reinstall XP Home Edition. I am having a problem that has me completely baffled. I have formatted completely (FAT32) and tried to reinstall XP. However, whenever it gets to about the 35 minute mark of "installing devices", it completely freezes up. The little active box in lower right is motionless and no activity on the HD. I have formatted and tried to reinstall several times. I have gone into bios and disabled serial and parellel ports, modem. I have disabled everything I could find except keyboard, trackball and display (I have no option to disable USB). Tried to reinstall with just minimal devices. It doesn't work. It freezes at the 35 minute mark of installing devices.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[jdhurst]

The operative word is probably "old". That machine, IIRC, was certified for Windows 2000 and probably not much more.

One of the fundamental failings of older machines was the power management software. I think XP want ACPI, and (again, IIRC), the A22m was APM. I am going from memory here and could be incorrect.

However, you might want to look at power managment drivers for that machine on the Lenovo site and download them to diskette or CD and see if XP can use them while trying to install. You might also try to install the latest BIOS before installing.

Otherwise, the machine may just be too old for XP. ... JDH

[korsondo]

[quote="

Otherwise, the machine may just be too old for XP. ... JDH[/quote]

Only thing about that is that it worked just fine with XP Home, for about 18 months, until just recently when the sound went out. I decided to just do a complete format and reinstall. That's when my problems began.

[rkawakami]

Pull out the MiniPCI card and try re-installing again.

[korsondo]

Pull out the MiniPCI card and try re-installing again.

bingo!!! That did it! Thanks so much! Been fighting with this thing for a week. Just out of curiosity (and for my own information) what was it that made you say the minipci card? I would have never thought of that.

[rkawakami]

Experience . Had this problem a couple of times with T23s and I believe that several others here have had the same issue before. The clue was that the problem came up at the same spot during the OS install.

edit: Here's an old thread which describes your problem almost to the exact minute:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=30159