Clean Windows XP install problem

C

chise1

New Member
Hi, I'm in the middle of installing Windows XP home on another computer, but I am in a bit of a tizzy. I put the CD in the drive and booted off of that to the XP setup screen similar to this one here (except it says Home Edition at the top) http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPpro1setup.jpg. I did everything and chose which partition to install XP on, got to this screen: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPpro7setup.gif, and my computer restarted like it is supposed to. I've read multiple times that you aren't supposed to press any buttons when the "Press any Key to Reboot" screen pops up, and I don't. The computer reboots, but then I get back to my original screen asking if I would like to setup Microsoft Windows SP SP1a Home, or boot from the hard disk. I have tried both of them, and neither works, and I can't get past this screen. I even tried to remove my CD so that it would boot from the hard drive, but nothing happened, and it kept going back to the screen that always pops up when I boot up my computer that shows my motherboard type. Could you please help me?
 
Yes, I formatted the drive before installing, the first time using the long way that's on the CD, which resulted in a bit of an error, then proceeded to try reinstalling windows after a few "quick" formats as it's called.
 
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I had a similar (if not the same) problem. I hope someone else here knows how to solve that. In my case I had a feeling that my hard drive was the problem because it was stickin old (made in the late 90's) and seemed to be on its last leg. I bought a new hard drive, installed windows just fine on it and then tried to transfer my files from the old hard drive onto the new one. The weird thing is that although I had several partitions on that old drive and only reformatted one of them during my installation attempts, all of the partitions were gone. Luckly I had backed my files up onto CDs. I don't mean to freak you out, I really do think it was some disk error in my case.

A friend of mine had a hard drive (not old or anything) and according to Norton Disk Doctor (upon a random disk scan that my friend did) it said there was a disk error - although the computer seemed to work fine. Other programs also confirmed this. One day he decided to reformat because the pc was running way too slow and acting up too often. Well, that disk error apparently showed its ugly face, because we never got windows installed on it again. The symptoms when trying to reformat/reinstall Windows were the same as what you described.

I hope your problem is something completely different. What kind of hard drive do you have? How old is it? Do you have any reason to believe you might have a hard disk error?
 
i would say either the cd is corrupt, or after the setup you havn't changed the bios settings, try changing the setting from cd to hdd, and see if that works

chris
 
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