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 hang problem?
 

Its as simple as deleting a single file which caused the installation to freeze.

• Let the XP hang at 34 minutes remaining for the first time
• Remove the CD from the CD-ROM
• Reboot the PC by pressing the hardware reset button
• Don't enter the CD when the installation asks for it
• Open the DOS prompt (Shift + F10)
• Goto C:\Windows
  • Type setupapi.log
  • Hit enter
• The setupapi.log file will open in notepad
  • Scroll to the very last few lines in the file and search for the .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 XP installation skip it to complete successfully.
  • Close the notepad
• Goto the folder C:\Windows\inf in command prompt
  • Browse through the files to find the .inf belonging to the faulty device.
  • Straight away delete the inf file (eg: del mdmcxpt.inf) or move it somewhere safe for later (not the /inf/ folder)
• Now put in the XP installation CD and Continue the installation

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