Hangs At Setup Is Inspecting Computers Hardware Configuration

While trying to install Windows XP, my computer hangs at the “Please wait, setup is inspecting your computer’s hardware configuration” screen. This happens while trying to install either Windows XP Home or Windows XP Pro (both of which are original CDs), as well as a slipstreamed sp3 copy of XP. So I installing XP on an older computer I have and then put that hard drive back into the computer with the trouble, turned the system on and it hangs at either the black screen or at the F8 boot options screen when I press the F8 key.I checked the connections, tried stripping the computer hardware down to just a several year old CD / DVD drive, graphics card, 1 hard drive, and floppy. When that gave the same results, I tried every hardware arrangement I could think of; several different hard drives IDE and SATA (internal) ranging from 40GB’s to 500GB’s, slave / master / cable / select and the wire or port selection, 2 DVD drives (internal / external), together and in combinations for both the hard dives and the DVD drives, pulling out or unplugging all other connections (Ethernet, USB, TV-card, and floppy drive), and changed the placement and number of memory sticks. I also changed the monitors and all of this gave the same results.

I played with various settings of the main board jumpers and from within CMOS. I under clocked and over clocked the memory, CPU, and north bridge as well as changing the voltage, individually and together; manually and automatically. I set the optimized defaults and reset the Bios, both from within the CMOS and pulling the plug or with the jumper. I enabled everything and disabled everything that I could get away with. Even run the boot up Virus scan utility. Some of these would not let the system post properly, however the those that would allow me to post gave my the same system hanging problems with XP.With the exception of adding a couple of hard drives, changing out a DVD drive, adding a couple of USB devices, different OS’s and some CMOS settings; the system is the same as when it used to run XP Pro fine about a little over a year ago. Though I do remember that XP was fussy about starting up with trying to over clock the CPU to anything with the memory running at stock settings and so I was left with having to use the automatic settings (which I used the lite or medium settings). As for the other OS’s, I am currently running Windows 7rc (which runs fine). I’ve ran MSDOS 6.22 (via bootable CD), Ubuntu Linux v10.04, and Mandrake Linux (I believe v6. something). All of these installed and ran fine. However Windows 95, Windows 95 OEM, Windows 98, and the Windows 98 sp2 installation CD’s just went to black screen and froze. On some site sometime ago, I heard that you will sometimes run into conflicts if the north bridge chipset is from an Opposing graphics vendor than the Graphics Card that you are using which is the case in my system, an ATI chipset with an nVidia Video Card. Though I have no idea that is source of my problem or not and the only other video card that my system I think will take is an old Voodoo3 or 4, 3d Card.