XP Installation – The 34 minute hiccup

You want to install XP professional and suddenly you realize that it freezes up at the mention of 34 minutes remaining! You try all your efforts to make it running but nothing seems to be working to your dismay. You try checking your RAM, checking for any bad sectors in your hard drive, even your motherboard (as I have done) but cannot make a conclusion as to what’s the answer to your woes.
So what is the solution to the defamed 34 minute XP installation hangup problem?
Its as simple as deleting a simple file which caused the installation to freeze.

• Let the XP hang up at 34 minutes remaining for the first time
• remove the CD from the CDROM and reboot
• Dont enter the CD when the installation asks for it, instead open the DOS prompt (Shift + F10)
• goto C:/Windows and type setupapi.log, hit enter
• The setupapi.log file opens in a notepad
• Scroll to the very last few lines in the file and search for the word “inf”
• You will notice that in the last few moments the installation created a file with the extension “.inf” before dying out (in my case it was the faulty modem for which XP created the file mdmcxpt.inf).
• It means that the device mentioned in the last few lines is faulty and you have to make the installation skip through it.
• Close the notepad and go to the folder C:/windows/inf in command prompt
• Browse through the files to find the “.inf” which was related to the faulty device.
• Straightaway delete the inf file (eg: del mdmcxpt.inf)
• now put in the XP installation CD and Continue the installation

It will not put in the drivers related to the faulty device and so it wont freeze this time !!