I have a Thinkpad X220i with Sandy Bridge i3-2310 that I've used for some time now as a convenient XP machine. Today I went to use it for an actual work task (opening a very old Access MDB to resave to newer MDB that modern Access will open) and found the installation was totally corrupted. I'm pretty sure that was caused by the drive being loose in its bay (don't have the original caddy and modern SSD is thinner - I've added some sticky foam now to wedge it in place).

However, despite multiple attempts at wiping the SSD, and even swapping the SSD for a different one, I can't seem to get Windows XP setup to get past the first reboot. The progress bar splash screen comes up and animates, then sometimes briefly flashes to the white text on blue graphics screen that sometimes gives CHKDSK messages, then the screen goes blank. The HDD light continues for a while with the screen blank, then after a few minutes the HDD activity stops, and nothing more happens. Exactly the same behaviour, sometimes with the CHKDSK message, other times it flashes too quick to read.

If I remove the WinSetupFromUSB stick, then the GUI for the second stage of install does load - but obviously then it doesn't have the files it needs!

That is with the SATA controller set to compatibility mode. When I've tried it in AHCI mode (and the F6 drivers provided by the WinSetupfFromUSB project) I get the "critical error" BSOD. When I've tried with a CD installer in a USB CD drive, I also get the BSOD regardless of whether it is in AHCI or Compatibility mode.

The weird thing is that it clearly worked in the past when I originally set up XP, and nothing changed in the hardware setup or BIOS since then. I've just tried installing Windows 10 and that installed fine, so a hardware failure seems very unlikely (and I'd already tried with different SSDs). Any ideas what might be happening?