I have a machine with 2 GB RAM, 250 GB hard disk on which I had successfully installed Windows XP and Fedora in dual mode. Somewhere along the way I reformatted the entire drive and loaded only linux.
Now I need Windows XP again and so I used Gparted and deletd all the current linux partitions, created an ntfs 20GB partition and tried to install Windows but surprisingly I am getting an error during the windows installation.
It goes through the formatting process well, gathers information and Prepares installation successfully.
However when it is in Windows Installing mode it aborts during the installing devices process.

The message given is :
A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your system.
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
It restarted the machine but again it aborts at this same point with the same message.
It also states that one must disable BIOS memory cachine and shadowing.
I have noted that the harddrive is set at
ATA/IDE Legacy ( there is another option Native --dont know if I should be using that).

Please HELP me resolve this issue soon. I will very much appreciate it.

Im not sure about the errors you are experiencing, however to dualboot, windows does need to be installed first, then install fedora, another thing i like to do is if for some odd reason i need wondows ill just install virtualbox and install windows that way as opposed to dualbooting. (if its not broken, dont fix it).

The first thing I would do is reset the BIOS, and use setup defaults for everything. This error can be caused by a lot of things, but it's possible a setting got changed that you don't remember. The fact that Linux was on the hard drive should be irrelevant.

Thanks for your prompt replies.
Right now I do not have any OS on my machine.
smedley you suggest that I first install linux and then Vbox and then windows on it ...Right? I will give that a try later surely.
I am comfortable with dual booting since I have done it in the past.
But for some reason after installing only Linux and deleting them I have run into this problem.
I have read somewhere that I should use the dd command to reset the MBR. But how do I get to the command prompt now that there is no OS? Can one do it through gparted?

Also FYI I did reset the defaul options in BIOS and tried again but same problem. Where does one see the memory cache and shadowing in the bios?

Please help me out. I am eagerly wanting to having this issue resolved soon.

dd can be used to zero the drive (takes a very long time), it can be done from a live cd but i would suggest trying a few things before going that route. the command would be substitute sda as needed of course.

Do not install Linux first and Windows second if you are doing a multi-boot system. It is much easier to install Windows first, then install Linux and let grub handle multi-booting. Otherwise Windows will overwrite the MBR and you won't be able to boot Linux.

Winsxp can't read linux MBR if you have gparted you can reformat drive not the partitioning but set drive to msdos which will clear all entries to MBR allowing xp to write to it.

Not true. Windows doesn't have to "read" the mbr. The presence of an mbr has nothing to do with the disk being visible to Windows. The fact that the disk was formatted by Linux or had Linux installed would have no effect on whether you were able to install to it or not. Windows can overwrite any filesystem.

Maybe not but a lot of paeople experience this problem after installing linux & since OP has deleted linux partition might as well refomat drive which will clear MBR & I guarantee that wins xp will be able to write to it.

Try the ULTIMATE BOOT CDand use DBAN (Darek's Nuke And Boot) to wipe the drive clean (other wipers are also available).

seeing as XP is in fact starting the install
It can read the drive!!!
the mbr or non MS partition formats do not come into play here

this is a BIOS issue

you should be able to get into the bios by hitting "F2" or "F8"
-- keep tapping the "f2" button during the boot
you should get into the bios settings

there will be a onscreen option to "reset " it to factory settings

Could it be that you need to slipstream in some service packs to get this working?


Guess you could borrow a different xp cd to test if cd is bad. Better to try a windows 7 dvd to see if it will start to boot.

Try memtest and maybe hard drive diags.


There was a bug in linux a very long time ago where the partiton numbers got off. I doubt that is the case here.

Do you have any Linux liveCD?

You might need to use dd from a Linux liveCD to trash the MBR, so the Windows installer sees no MBR (as if the disk were brand new) and automatically creates an MBR for you.

Just as I would never use a Windows partitioning tool to create a partition for a Linux install, I would never use a Linux partitioning tool to create a partition for a Windows install. There is too much chance to get it wrong and no real benefit to trying it at all.

Windows and Linux installer are most typically used creating the partitions they want from unpartitioned space. That is simpler than getting them to use an existing partition.

I'm not sure I understand where you are saying it fails, but it sounds like it fails somewhere I would not expect for an initial MBR problem or for a BIOS problem. So I might not have a good guess. But lots of people have reported implausible symptoms on XP install after removing Linux and many have reported those symptoms fixed by trashing the MBR before installing Windows.

I haven't seen that message in a long time, and it was wrong when I last saw it. It has also been a long time since I saw a BIOS that had the option to turn that stuff off. Does your BIOS have such an option?

For an ordinary XP install CD, that must be left in Legacy mode during the XP install. If you have an OEM CD for Windows and it originally came with that same PC, it might be correct to switch to Native mode during the install.

After you install XP, if it or you is able to find/download the right drivers for your motherboard, then after installing those drivers, you might improve performance by switching to native mode.

have you tried creating a new partition table? is current one a gpt?

I will reiterate that his error has nothing to do with either the MBR or Linux having been installed on the drive. Two seconds of research would show you guys that this is a hardware error that has been reported many times.

1. Clear the BIOS.

2. Reset to defaults.

3. Turn off PNP BIOS features (let OS decide).

4. Turn off unused hardware features (parallel port, serial port, floppy, etc.)

5. Try again.