clean hd, installing an operating system

C

cometfly

New Member
Hi, I am installing an operating system on a clean hd that has nothing on it. I cannot boot from a cd-rom directly. Should I make an ms-dos diskette and try to boot from a cd? Obviously, I'm tryin to do a cd-installation of an operating system. Any comments is greatly appreciated. :)
 
So you already reformatted the drive and are trying to install? Did you make sure the cd-rom was the first in the bios for the boot priority? Make it diskette, cdrom, hd.. Then the winxp disk should boot fine.
 
1. bios is setup to cd-rom first but when it loads up, it says atapi cdrom: n/a or something, like it (the computer) cant see the cd-rom drive.

2. is there a way to reformatt the drive with msdos

3. I have a two debian dvd's; btw, my cd-rom is a dvd-rom, lol :rolleyes:
 
Yeah, if you go to bootdisk.com than create an MS-DOS boot disk and when the A: appears after it boots, type fdisk. That should give you the ability to reformat, and you can probably create a Debian boot disk if you put the disk in a computer with Windows running and use Raw Write from the menu that pops up.
 
okay, for those that want to learn what the problem was keep reading:

Problem: computer didnt see the cd-rom drive I had, thus no operating system could be installed through any CD (which is the most common way to install OS's) easily for a newbie that is.

Solution: make a startup installation disk. Why? The computer doesnt recognize cd-rom drives, because...well...some just dont at the beginning when you have nothing installed (including any old operating systems). The key item in the startup installation disk is the top secret, one could say lol, cd-rom [drivers] for the most common CD-ROM drives. The cd-rom [drivers] are files that make CD-ROM drives do what they do (or should be doing). If you dont have the driver, the drives won't work. When the drives dont work, you cant use the CD-ROM installation method. Wow, I WAS stupid, but now I know..
 
That's totally inaccurate. I've never had to use boot disk in order to install an operating system. The older cd drives are usually not a bootable drive, all the newer ones are. The only reason you would need a bootdisk is for the older drives. And if your drive is one of the newer ones, maybe there was something wrong with it, or maybe the bios needed updated or something.
 
Doom_Machine said:
the drivers are for the OS only, bios doesnt need drivers to see your hardware.
Click to expand...


I know that but maybe he has an old motherboard and the bios doesn't have the cd rom as a bootable device or something. his explanation was just a little flakey (sp)....
 
If your BIOS isn't seeing the CD-ROM, set it to AUTO-DETECT, also some older motherboards, would only BOOT a CD-ROM, if it was on the PRIMARY IDE CHANNEL, and the CD must be set to MASTER.

If you make a boot-disk, or create a bootable cd, the DOS-DRIVERS for the CD-DRIVE must also be on the FLOPPY, and entered in the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.
 
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