Windows XP wont install after format

B

bvillalta

New Member
Hello everyone, and I apologize in advance if this topic has been covered before. I tried to search first, but was overwhelmed with all of the threads available and couldnt find anything in particular that related to this.

I'm trying to format and re-install windows xp (with SP3 pre-installed) on an older PC that I have. I have formatted the hard drive already, but everytime it goes to install it doesn't work. Basically what will happen is after its done formatting it will go through blue screens where I press F8 to accept and then it will start to copy files for setup. Once its done copying the files, it will say that its going to reset. When it does reset, it doesnt start the install. It just restarts the whole format process again. Ive tried removing the CD from the drive before it restarts, but it just gives an error message "disk read error". When I put the disc back in it just restarts the whole process.

Can you give me any advice as to what I'm doing wrong or what I can do differently? Should I just take it to a PC repairman?? lol

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and for any help you can give!!
 
It sounds like it boots to the CD again. Are you sure you have the boot priority set up correctly and the drive is good?

It should be set to boot to the CD first, then HDD second. Once it formats and copies, it should restart and say "Press any key to boot to CD". Don't press anything; just let it proceed, and it should boot to the HDD.
 
Yeap, your just booting to the windows cd over and over. After the first restart your suppost to boot to the harddrive.
 
That's exactly what I thought...when it kept doing it I figured it was booting from CD. The weird thing is though it doesnt even stop to prompt the "press any key to boot from cd..." I can see text for like a millisecond, then it jumps right into the blue screen. Do you think if I try changing the boot priority to HDD first, it might not jump to the cd immediately?? The other weird thing is if I remove the cd before it restarts, i get a disk read error message :confused:
 
What I would do in this case is download run killdisk on it attached to a different system. The hard drive could be faulty and thats whyits not copying the files correctly. Try killdisk first though.
 
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