black screen when installing WinXP

[Biggie]

Hi,
I've got a problem installing Windows XP Pro from the install CD.
There is only the initial message:
"Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration..."
then nothing: a black screen.
The computer is not frozen, as I can switch the numlock and capslock leds on
the keyboard, but apart from that the only thing I can do is reboot with
ctrl-alt-del.

The CD seems alright: it boots on another computer.
The PC is new (Asus P4P800-E Deluxe, for Pentium 4), and I'm able to install
Linux on it. RAM test with memtest86 is OK. Tufftest doesn't report any
error either.

Anything I should try?
Thank you.

[pip22]

If you are not wanting to dual boot linux/xp, you are probably trying to
install xp over the linux installation, which could be the cause of your
problem. Get rid of the Linux partition first. Boot from a 98 floppy. FDISK
to delete the 'non-DOS' partition. FDISK again to create a new primary DOS
partition and say 'yes' when asked if you want to make it 'active'. Then run
FORMAT on it, and you should be able to install xp.

[John Smith]

"pip22" <pi...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E71171F3-117D-401B...@microsoft.com...

> If you are not wanting to dual boot linux/xp, you are probably trying to
> install xp over the linux installation, which could be the cause of your
> problem. Get rid of the Linux partition first. Boot from a 98 floppy.
FDISK
> to delete the 'non-DOS' partition. FDISK again to create a new primary DOS
> partition and say 'yes' when asked if you want to make it 'active'. Then
run
> FORMAT on it, and you should be able to install xp.
>

PIP22, I owe you some apologizes: i initially thought that this answer was
stupid and that the windows setup wouldn't block with a black screen just
because it doesn't understand the partition table. But actually you pointed
me to the right direction: windows setup did work well after zero'ing the
partition table.

Thank you Pip.

Question: why is the windows setup so dumb???

[Yves Leclerc]

"John Smith" <som...@microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:420cf031$0$22468$ba62...@news.skynet.be...
...

>
> Question: why is the windows setup so dumb???
>
>

How many CDs do you want to use in order to set up Windows? If the set up
needs to be smart, it could take multiple CDs just to control the entire
Windows set up..

[Biggie]

Yves Leclerc wrote:

Look at any recent Linux distribution, or even BSD: it can handle an
uncredible number of configurations, including different partition types,
partition table formats...

If at least Windows would print a honnest message: "failing because of this
or this..." Here I had to do binary eliminations myself (remove components,
try Bios settings...). I only begun to believe in pip22's explanation after
replacing the hard drive...

And Microsoft could publish the specifications for its NT filesystem and
boot process, so the other OS's would know how to format the partition so
that Windows is not lost. I'm not speaking of being 'open source' here,
just the minimum in order to ensure a proper interoperability.