Problems installing xp pro+sp2

[xocal]

I have a Gateway P5-166 mmx which was giving trouble with Win98 se, so I decided to try win xp pro using the 6 floppies system and the CD. Everything appeared to be going fine until, during the windows install, up popped the panel for customising the Regional and Language settings, but I cannot move the cursor arrow with the mouse! and I have three lights flashing on my keyboard! I tried changing the plugs around but this makes no difference, and they are correctly connected at present. The keyboard was functioning ok at the start as I used the up and down arrows and enter key to select the format functions etc. Has anyone any thoughts on what could be wrong?

[ECA]

You ran out of ram for the install...
I wouldnt TOUCH XP on a P5-166...
It needs 1 gig of ram to run well, and 512meg just to work. It needs about 20 gigs on the HD just to cache properly...
ALSO, you dont want much plugged in when loading a NEW install, nothing more then PS2 devices..
Goto Win 2000 or Win98...

[xocal]

You ran out of ram for the install...
I wouldnt TOUCH XP on a P5-166...
It needs 1 gig of ram to run well, and 512meg just to work. It needs about 20 gigs on the HD just to cache properly...
ALSO, you dont want much plugged in when loading a NEW install, nothing more then PS2 devices..
Goto Win 2000 or Win98...

Taking your advice, but am stymied with re partitioning and formatting my C: drive which has reduced in size from 4gb to 504 mb??
Will try Partition Magic, and hope for the best.

[ECA]

Probably says 504mb BECAUSE thats how much HD space XP took.

You only got a 4gig drive?? SPEND $50 and get something BIGGER. thats probably what happened to Win98...NOT enough room anymore. NEVER take the last 20% of a drive.. thats Cache area for windows...Once its gone, and Windows dont have enough ram, you are screwd..
Your system can handle, about a 30gig with no problems, above that you have todo a few fancy things. Nothing hard.

[xocal]

[QUOTE=ECA]Probably says 504mb BECAUSE thats how much HD space XP took.

Thanks! I've tried to do a clean install of 98, but fdisk shows that my c drive has only 504Mb capacity!! when it is a 6Gb drive.
Any thoughts on where the extra has gone??
Have tried removing partitions and formatting but still end up with only 504Mb?

[xocal]

Taking your advice, but am stymied with re partitioning and formatting my C: drive which has reduced in size from 4gb to 504 mb??
Will try Partition Magic, and hope for the best.

Thanks , I've run the maxtor diagnostic and have done a full wipe of the drive, which incidentally passed all tests, Well I then tried Partition Magic and finally managed to Format just the one drive, which is still only 504Mb, but on which I have managed to load win98, taking all of 2 hours to do so! BUT now, having reached the stage where a window comes up requesting User Info, I cannot either enter details or move the cursor as both the keyboard and the mouse have locked up!!! so am back to square one!! Any thoughts on how to progress???????

[ECA]

At this point, I will have to say that there is some major problems.
1. I think there is an extra partition set ont he drive that has eaten up most of the room, and you cant see it, as its probably NTFS, and your programs dont see it and cant use it.
If you have a setting in BIOS to boot to the First drive, as CD...thats your last choice, and see if you can get NTFS dos..
2. if that isnt it, then there is a hardware error someplace.

[xocal]

Thanks to all.
I finally managed to sort out my drives using MaxBlast 4, Partition Magic and EZ Drive and now have win98se installed on my first drive of 40GB and have the second at 60GB reserved for storage.
ps. I learnta lot in the process!!

[ECA]

So, you got another drive??
Also did you read my sig at the bottom of my posts??

[xocal]

So, you got another drive??
Also did you read my sig at the bottom of my posts??

Well I always had two drives!! but they had obviously been messed up along the way, as I could only see a max of 8Gb between them!!
I've scraped them to the bone and maximised their potential, so now have total 100gb, and as I said, learnt a lot in the process.
The sig was noted!
Thanks again to all.