Are you getting the dreaded Blue Screen of Death when you try to install Windows XP?
Have you already tried using a slipstreamed SP3 disk?
Does that error say something like:
STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF78D2524,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
Blah blah blah blah fail blah blah CHKDSK /F blah blah failblog.org
Have you already tried all the different modes of SATA/RAID/AHCI/IDE/Legacy nonsense in the BIOS to try to get your hard drive to be detected properly but the darned thing still doesn’t want to install? Already updated your BIOS to the latest and greatest?
Even tried slipstreaming RAID and/or SATA drivers on an install CD or went so far as to dig up a floppy drive to F6 some drivers in place?
Think there’s no answer?
***Try replacing your IDE CD-ROM/DVD-RW drive with a SATA drive.***
Worked for me.
It’s deceptive, I know, but apparently even though the CD starts the Windows install process and loads drivers and everything seems grand, setup takes a big dump later on. I tried all the options above, even tried an IDE hard drive and SATA raid setups in various combinations, but they all ended in a BSoD. Nothing worked until I swapped the IDE CD-ROM with a SATA CD-ROM drive.
At one when I tried to install Windows 7, I got a message stating: A required CD/DVD device driver is missing. If you have a driver floppy disk, CD, DVD or USB flash drive, please insert it now. Note. If the windows installation media is in the drive, you can safely remove it for this step.
That really should have clued me into the whole CD/DVD thing, but of course I paid no attention, because I assumed if we got that far in the installation, that it was a hard drive controller issue, not a CD-ROM issue. Ah well.
Moral of the story: Try changing your BIOS settings first. Then try changing your CD-ROM drive.