I had this exact problem once. I suspect your problem has to do with how
your drives are jumpered.

After going through a similar situation I contacted the motherboard
manufacturer....... after a period of diagnostics  tech support decided the
controller was bad and authorized a return. When I hung up the phone I
decided to try swapping out the CD ROM with one in another PC... only
because it was the only thing I had not swapped out. It worked......but
only because this particular CD ROM was jumpered as a slave and I had
forgotten to change it to a master....... if I correctly jumpered it as a
master 95 would not install.

The solution was putting the CD on the secondary channel as a slave. After
Win 95 successfully installed I was able to change it back as a master. I
have no explantation as to why this occurred.

Mark
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As a slave on the secondary channel everything worked fine but if
>The problem (sorry it took so long to get here): Win95 will not
>install completely. The CD-ROM comes off the sound card (Sound Blaster
>Pro), so to make it all happen faster, I copied his Win95 folder to a
>parallel port zip drive, then to E and installed from there. All went
>fine until the point where Win95 "is starting for the first time". All
>files have been copied from the installing process. The next step is
>to "set up" (time, date, printer). When this reboot occurs, the Win95
>screen comes up (the artsy blue one) and the HD whirs away. Then a DOS
>screen comes up with the message "Windows is configuring your setup.
>This may take a few minutes (or some such)". Then, "Windows has
>completed the setup configuration and is continuing to load" (Both
>these messages are the standard after you've added new hardware or
>made major changes to the registry - I'm just not remembering the
>exact wording.). After about five seconds, the HD stops and the
>everything dies.
>
>Will Stephenson
>mailto:[log in to unmask]