Considering this is the 1st time I've had to reinstall the OS since 2001, and had no issues for the 3 years...it's not a big black eye on MS from my POV.
This is
the worst problem I've ever encountered though.
Windows ME will install every time. Windows 2000 and Windows XP will not install.
The only thing I haven't done up to this point was install and run a full virus scan.
I figured I had to do that because I am running out of ideas.
It found and fixed 1 virus so far. I am really hoping that is the problem and I research it and find it does some nasty MBR stuff.
Though, I have used the IBM Drive Fitness Test tool to erase the entire HD and ran fdisk /mbr several times.
Have also run FIXMBR from both Win2K recovery and WinXp recovery.
Every time I try to install either, it hangs when trying to find my hard drives.
Doesn't matter that I wiped the boot disk clean, tried removing each hard drive and making a new partition with partition magic or a WinME floppy boot disk.
Hmmmmm. Maybe I will grab my motherboard BIOS and flash it in case something can fuck that up.