Reloading Win xp pro problems...

[salvage-this]

Ok so I got a laptop that has a broken on the condition that; if you can fix it, you can have it. seemed like a sweet deal to me. It has two problems. 1. Is runs about 6 times slower than what it should be at. 2. The keyboard is broken. I took a shot at by trying to reload xp off of a boot disk and it is not stuck where it asks to validate the install online and then sits there for a hour trying to find a connection, but never does. Or it crashes when It tries to boot off of the disk or repair the errors. so now I can't even get to any menu to do a fresh install. Does anyone have any idea how to get me out of this problem, or how to nuke the hard drive and start from scratch?

Just in case this question comes up I have a legal copy of xp that I got from MSDNAA with a product key.

Thanks for any insight, I'm really stuck with this one!

 

[johnb35]

Is the hard drive in it a SATA or IDE connection? I would say put it in a different computer and format it that way. However, If it errors when booting to the install cd then I say it has a hardware issue. At what point does it crash when you boot to the install cd?

 

[salvage-this]

Is the hard drive in it a SATA or IDE connection? I would say put it in a different computer and format it that way. However, If it errors when booting to the install cd then I say it has a hardware issue. At what point does it crash when you boot to the install cd?

it seems to fail just as I am trying to write the new system from the setup menu. But if i am not booting from the CD it just goes to the log in page and tells me that I need to validate the system. I am guessing that it has an IDE connection. This laptop is a few years old. It is an HP dv8000 to give you a better idea. I hope that that gives you a bit more info.

 

[johnb35]

Look in the bios to see if there is an option to change mode from ahci to ide mode and try reinstalling again. It still seems like a hardware issue somewhere.