Windows Me reinstallation hangs

I have a Dell Demension 2100, 128 ram celeron processor...in which came with Windows Me, I reformatted and tryed to reinstall windows me with disk that Dell sent with computer, but it hangs on the hardware detecton stage. I've shut down and restarted, but it does the same thing. I've tryed following the Windows knowldgebase article on the topic "How to Troubleshoot Computer Hangs during Hardware Detection" but still have the same problem. I've also tryed installing windows 98 but it does the same thing except when you restart it, it just goes to a blank blue screen, instead of the setup page. One difference I thought odd was, when in the Device manager in win 98, in the partial setup, in safe mode, it lists all the appropriate items, whereas in windows me, in safe mode, it only lists the network adapter and bios. Any help would be appreciated.

I ended up installing windows 98, because that is the full version with a p/ b switch. At the dos prompt I just typed setup /p b, and at the hardware detection it asked me yes or no to detect each hardware. The first one is the problem. "System Bus". Not sure what that is or how that affects my computer. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Originally Posted by Sandy M

I have a Dell Demension 2100, 128 ram celeron processor...in which came with Windows Me, I reformatted and tryed to reinstall windows me with disk that Dell sent with computer, but it hangs on the hardware detecton stage. I've shut down and restarted, but it does the same thing. I've tryed following the Windows knowldgebase article on the topic "How to Troubleshoot Computer Hangs during Hardware Detection" but still have the same problem. I've also tryed installing windows 98 but it does the same thing except when you restart it, it just goes to a blank blue screen, instead of the setup page. One difference I thought odd was, when in the Device manager in win 98, in the partial setup, in safe mode, it lists all the appropriate items, whereas in windows me, in safe mode, it only lists the network adapter and bios. Any help would be appreciated.