I am new to your site so I hope I am in the right part, I will give you everything I have done so far, bought second-hand laptop, xp pro installed, no disc's, I done a reinstall and xp took ages to load( 25-30 min) hangs on desktop, pointer vanishes then come back again, works for a few seconds, then hangs and repeats the same process.

Will boot into safe mode.
Will run win2000.
Will run vista.

Thing I have tried!

24 hour wipe of hdd + format.
Installed xp on my hdd on other laptop( works fine ) put hdd back in my laptop ( hangs ).
Flashed bios.
Removed cmos battery overnight.
Friend put it on diagnostic bench at work, everything OK, except for files missing?
Installed win2000, then upgraded to xp, still the same result.
Tried 3or 4 xp discs, including genuine.
Tried using floppy installation discs(6)
Tried xp home, but will not go past 34min left, just hangs.

I think that is it, I am beginning to think there is some sort of security, maybe on the bios? Or the hdd, to stop me reinstalling xp pro, ( I can get into bios ) I bought it of eBay about 6 months ago, so have no history.
I have thought about buying new hdd, but don't wan't to waste money if it is going to do the same thing with a new hdd.

Sorry this is long winded, but wanted to give you as much info as possible.

Thank you in advance

Tom

So I guess you only want XP on that machine? Why don't you take it back for a check up because this is a very difficult thing to figure out, only a good guess will do.

It might be that the HDD boot sector to install XP is corrupt... Told you

Hi benn11
Vista too much for laptop, I am not keen on win2000.
By the way, like the badge, strange game on Saturday, is there any way to check the boot sector, would a new hdd work.

Thanks

Tom