How to install XP

If you can, get another hard drive and put it in the same computer then try to install it.  If it works great, if not, report back.

Good morning Glen,

Firstly if your computer is relatively new (in the past 3 years) i would suggest upgrading to at least windows 7.

Now the issue with your XP
- The issue can also be related to things like RAM so i would suggest downloading and burning an ISO of something called MEMTEST or MEMCHECKER these apps will boot like a windows disk and test your RAM for you.


The other things that could cause you some issues is your graphics card.

Are you on a laptop or a PC.? are you confident in removing some hardward and reseating it..? (removing the ram and cards and placing them back into the machine)

What version of XP are you trying to install (e.g. RTM. SP1, SP2, or SP3)?

I should have mentioned the following:
The HP laptop computer has been working reasonably well.  I am
going to give it away and would like to wipe C drive.  Does
anyone know of a program I can run from a flash drive to wipe
the hard drive?  I have all the drivers to install after I reinstall the
OS.  I am not going to buy a newer OS or new hard drive before
I give it away.  Meanwile, I'll  look over the suggestions you made.

good point dave, most of the hp systems I seen use f11, hopefully that partition on the drive is intact. I just did a windows restore to factory two days ago on a friend's HP system, by accessing the restore partition(of course I backed up his data first). This partition usually has diagnostics as well to ensure the system is healthy before doing the factory restore. This is definitely the easiest way to reinstall the os. Most likely you will have to install any service packs, then a whole slew of windows updates to get it up to date. The only problem with doing a factory restore is all the crapware that is installed on the system. Trial versions of software, games, and other garbage most people will never use. I spent over an hour to remove the crapware, and useless stuff that the factory image contained.

I went to BIOS and did diagnostic tests and got the following results:

Memory test - Passed
Smart check - Passed
Short DST - Failed
Start up test - Failed
Hard drive test - Failed

I'm afraid this machine has a bad hard drive.

The drive is failing. Look at smart tools to diagnose further.
Who is the drive's manufacturer.  Each have their own tools.

make sure to backup the data and image the drive.
You can the restore the image on a replacement HD.

If you are selling the laptop and do not want to fork out the money for a new hard drive you should just buy a used drive from somewhere and sell it like that. O you can just sell it and tell the buyer you are keeping the old drive. You are spending a lot of hours trying to recover the drive when it is ready to die anyway. Is not your time worth money? Due to the condition of the drive when running the diagnostics I feel that the drive will die soon. The buyer would probably more upset at you for selling the laptop with a drive that dies on him then he would be if he knew he had to buy a new drive before he bought the laptop.

my experience with HDDRegenerator   : when all bad sectors were fixed - no drive returned  to me with problems.

It depends if the hard drive has bad sectors due to physical damage or so called labeled bad sectors, If it is the second option HDD regenerator is an excellent application to recover bad sectors, I have recovered many drives myself using the application. But if the platters are damaged physically, for example if some damaged the sectors by accidentally bumping the laptop while the platters were spinning the platters could become damaged physically and no software application repair such damage. If the drive is failing physically then it may eventually die totally. It is hard to know if the harddrive failed the tests because of the corrupted drive causing bad sectors or if it is a hardware problem.

hDDREG only rewrite sectors that have too low amplitudes to be read properly
so if tit is failing physically - HDDREg won't repair it

Results of HDDRegenerator scan were:

COMPLETE SCAN
D - Two delays detected
B - 0 sectors remain bad
R - 0 sectors remain bad
N - 0 sectors remain bad
R - 0 sectors remain bad

No repair was done.  I'll try UBCD next

It looks like the drive is in fairly good shape, except for the delayed sectors. I would go ahead an reimage the drive, or see if you can access the recovery sector by taping F11 when you first turn on the computer. Once you boot to the recovery sector you can do a factory restore from there. The computer will then be clean just the computer was when it came from the manufacturer. The user that buys the laptop can remove the junkware that was installed by the manufacturer and install all the windows updates, and service packs if it is not up to service pack 3.

An issue in the first 63 cylinders would cause intermittent bsods.

A potential problem here is that the Probook 4415s laptop shipped
with Vista, but had XP added later.

Did the XP install media come from The vendor?
There are examples on how to create the recovery data after the install.

If you have the HP media and you are going to give the computer away, install whatever the media is (vista you said).

Thanks

@GlenAJ - Thank you and I was happy to help you with this.