What are some tech forums you guys use?

[Infamous]

no, the windows disc is pristine. I also tried leaving both drives connected( the IDE im running on, and the SATA in question) and tried running windows disc, it stalled out even then.. i guess i have a perfectly functioning bad drive.. hmmm

[Devilguns]

I ran into something like this with a computer I was working on for somebody. I was reinstalling windows and it just got to a certain part and stalled. Turns out it was a bad stick of ram. If you got two or more sticks in there it might be worth a shot to try installing with just one. Or at least run memtest. Just a shot in the dark but worth trying.

[Qicmee]

As Devilguns said, bad RAM is a major reason for failing a Windows install. It's not too hard to plug/unplug sticks or download & check with memtest (boots without Windows).

I believe the virus is gone. I'm still thinking you have no hardware failure, but we won't know for sure until "later".

I like that your SATA drive used to be installed on that PC and that it has no switches. You're using the same cable now as when you were able to read & write files to the drive.

Follow-up detail: When this drive was previously used on this PC, it was not partitioned (the whole 250GB was under one drive letter)?

I'm wondering what stage Windows is at when it stalls. What screen message is displayed? If it's while checking hardware, USB devices have caused problems.

[Infamous]

it was not partioned, whole drive was using "C". at the install of windows, it installs all the drivers and kernel stuff that you see scrolling at the bottom of blue screen. once all that scrolling stops it says Set up is starting windows. " maybe not 100% but very close to thoe exact words) then just stalls out. no CS spinning, the drive stops after about 30 secs. and then just blue screen of in this case, nothing.

ill look into the memtest thing in a bit. i know sooner or later, even out of spite, ill get this drive working lol.

[Qicmee]

Potential material failures: RAM or CD problem
Potential config problems: many

Microsoft has some good advice in their knowledge base.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310760
- That advice links to this http://support.microsoft.com/kb/216251/EN-US
- Most commenters were successful after selecting "Standard PC with C-Step i486", but one of the others might also help.

Other random suggestions that sometimes helped:
- ACPI setting in the BIOS. Try setting to disabled.
- Change switch on CD/DVD drive on IDE channel to master.

[Dead...Again]

What mode are you using for the SATA drive? (AHCI, Legacy IDE, Native Mode IDE, RAID)