Tech: Problems Installing XP

I have an Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop that needs to be given the 'clean slate' treatment after being turned in by a departed employee. I wanted to simply boot from the OEM XP Pro CD, format the drive, and do a clean install of XP. Simple.

Wrong.

It would boot from the CD, but as it was loading files for setup, the laptop would shut down. The computer would boot into the existing Windows XP, but would not run setup. I tried running the setup from explorer - same effect. I also tried booting from the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disk set I have - same problem.

I thought it might be RAM, so I removed one DIMM module, then the other - no effect. I then took memory from an identical laptop and tried that, but that didn't work either.

So now it's been a few hours, so I went to lunch.

When I came back, I put the original memory modules back in their original locations, but the modular drive back, and put the battery back in and booted from the XP Pro CD. It worked. For a moment I thought it was the RAM until I realized that I had not reconnected the AC power cord - the laptop was running on battery. Just for fun, I stopped setup, plugged the machine back into AC power, and booted - same failure.

I'm not sure if the problem is with the specific AC adapter I am using or if it's something on the motherboard, but I've got setup running now without further problem. Of course, the battery is over two years old and was not going to hold a charge long enough to complete the install so I was forced to plug the AC adapter back in once it passed the point where it normally crashed.

Everything seems to be fine now, we'll see how it comes out.