This entry is serving as a reminder to myself for the following wretched, irritating and completely unnecessary issue:

SYMPTOM: Upon booting up from a Windows XP installation CD, the screen blanks and the system freezes right after displaying “Setup is inspecting your computer’s hardware configuration”. The system has been known to run Windows XP perfectly before and there has no changes to the hardware.

SOLUTION: Use a partition manager utility to delete any active partitions on the hard drive. Try running the setup again and you will get pass the “Setup is inspecting…” screen.

REASON: XP is very finicky when it comes to being re-installed on a used hard drive. The hard drive that I was trying to install XP on had Linux and XP gets a bit upset when you try to install it in company with existing Linux boot info.