Windows XP; downgrade Pro to Home? Or validate?

[pzkpfw]

I've had a similar issue, and discovered it was because I had the monitor plugged in thruogh DVI rather than VGA. It would work for about 30 seconds, then nothing. After switching to VGA, it worked perfectly.

Yep, some of the forum posts I googled up did claim video drivers (or cards) to be at fault, and recommended using "simpler" modes or "simpler" cards during the install.

(
Some people claimed removing USB mice helped. Some people claimed a deep test and replace of RAM fixed it. Some people said taking their DVD-R out helped. Some fiddled with their HDD settings (cable select versus Master/Slave).

In my case blowing away the HDD (a bit) was what fixed it, but pulling out the crappy AGP video card and putting in an even crappier PCI card was going to be the next step.
)

[Gremlin]

right click My Computer, Manage, then go to Disk Management.

You should be able to see the partitions on the disks, ie, your missing space, and create a partition from the unallocated space.

Other thing can be bad optical drives...