I've seen this problem somewhere before.
 
a) Are you using any kind of scsi, or IDE adapter card? If so, then you need to first install the drivers for this card before you try in install Win2k.
 
b)Make sure all your IDE drives are set up properly... IE, properly set as master/slave etc. Any conflicts can result in I/O problems and could possibly give you the problem you are having.
 
c) Also, perhaps your MBR got funked. Sometimes you can get a virus in your MBR which will make the hard drive forget about how it's set up (The MBR shows the computer how the drive is partitioned etc). If this is the case, or if your MBR got corrupted by other means, you would need to delete it, then rewrite it. This is super easy to do, however you have to be prepared to lose EVERYTHING on the hard drive... beyond recovery. You can download a utility that will delete the MBR for ya here: http://146.186.231.41/downloads/killboot.com
 
Once you run this program your computer is not functional until you partition your drive again. Just go into Win2k setup and do it.. it will tell you that the hard drive is new, or that it's damaged. It tells you this cuz it can't read it at all cuz there is no MBR. Go to the next step and create partitions. This **should** take care of your problem. If not, then i'm out of options right now. I'll think about it though.

Make sure that you check out the first two before you try number 3... Use number 3 as a last resort. Unless of course you can back up everything to a different hard drive or computer first.
 
But just so you understand, if you delete the MBR, you lose everything on that hard drive. You will be starting fresh on that drive.

good idea, thanks. I will double check that MBR, Am I mistaken that re-FDISKing will clear that? I doubt it is a faulty master/slave setup since all Win9x OS's have been installed with no issues and I've never made that particular mistake before =), BUT I will double check (You never know).
 
Any other suggestions... It is highly unlikely there is a virus, This PC is a tertiary PC, always been behind a firewall, basically only served a printer to the network... hardly used, been formatted, FDISKed, wiped installed, uninstalled, many, many times... Win2K is the only problem I've had with, since I outgrew the measly 300mhz =)
 
HDD is connected to the onboard IDE controller, no SCSI adaptors installed. There is an additional 850mb harddrive in the system...
 
 
 
~NT Worker

Re-Fdisking wont fix it. You would need to actually delete the MBR. Re-Fdisking will redo partitions, but the original MBR will still exist. You have to actually delete it. Then when you go into fdisk, or Win2k setup it will re-create it when it starts talking about disks.
 
 
If youre talking about a personal firewall, they just stop hackers.. not viruses.
 
Um lesee.... you could attempt unplugging your other unnecessary IDE devices during the install... to see if that helps.
 
Other than the advice I already gave you, I'm out of ideas for now.
Peace.