Problem installing XP on SCSI drives

[PsychEroc]

I just inherited a Dell Precision Workstation 650 at work.
It has 2 SCSI hard disks which had been wiped and I re-wiped them to be sure.
Tried to install XP (32 bit) and it took more than 8 hours, seemed that "copying files" took forever.
Finally windows started, I answered intro questions, now it won't load explorer.exe.
So I rebooted, windows took abnormally long time to load, but eventually it started, I logged in, then again it only shows background with no desktop.
It's the weirdest thing.
Program Manager shows no explorer.exe process, so I launched it manually, it runs for a couple seconds then terminates.

I have feeling it's a hard drive problem, because of the slow installation.
At the beginning of installation, Windows setup couldn't detect the SCSI drives until I loaded drivers from a floppy.
I've never worked with SCSI drives before, anyone have an insight?

I just started to run setup again to "repair" the Windows installation and, like before, it's taking forever to copy files.
Any ideas?

Also, I think the previous system installation was 64 bit XP, that shouldn't make any difference should it?
I've never dealt with a 64bit OS.

Originally Posted by PsychEroc

I just inherited a Dell Precision Workstation 650 at work.
It has 2 SCSI hard disks which had been wiped and I re-wiped them to be sure.
Tried to install XP (32 bit) and it took more than 8 hours, seemed that "copying files" took forever.
Finally windows started, I answered intro questions, now it won't load explorer.exe.
So I rebooted, windows took abnormally long time to load, but eventually it started, I logged in, then again it only shows background with no desktop.
It's the weirdest thing.
Program Manager shows no explorer.exe process, so I launched it manually, it runs for a couple seconds then terminates.

I have feeling it's a hard drive problem, because of the slow installation.
At the beginning of installation, Windows setup couldn't detect the SCSI drives until I loaded drivers from a floppy.
I've never worked with SCSI drives before, anyone have an insight?

I just started to run setup again to "repair" the Windows installation and, like before, it's taking forever to copy files.
Any ideas?

Also, I think the previous system installation was 64 bit XP, that shouldn't make any difference should it?
I've never dealt with a 64bit OS.

The fact that the previous installation was 64 bit XP doesn't make a difference as you've completely removed what was on the disks.

Personally I suspect the SCSI driver you're loading. Double check what SCSI card you're using and download the most recent drivers. If that doesn't resolve the issue then try and find older drivers released about the same time as the XP installation media you're using (that might be tricky.)

I've seen this once before on a Compaq server. We assumed it had a particular SCSI card installed so used our standard drivers. It turned out that the server had a newer version of the card that required updated drivers. As in your case file copies took forever and it turned out that disk writes were timing out and having to be repeated. Hence the long delay. Using the correct drivers fixed the problem.

Rik