WinXP Home halfway installing

[GreenTea]

I'm trying to install Windows XP Home on my computer and it gets all the way through the CD part, and reboots and boots from Windows on the hard drive and then when it's setting up it asks for the CD again, but none of my CD drives appear in the list. What do I do?

Am I being clear enough? I read over it and I'm not sure if it makes sense to anyone else....

 

[nick5449]

Does it ask for a specific file, or just for you to reenter the CD(when the CD is already inserted)? Try typing D:/ (where D is your CD drive). I know theres a way you can copy the files to the hdd and install it from there which might solve your problem. I cant tell you exactly how to do it though since its been a while since I've done that...maybe someone else can help.

 

[GreenTea]

It asks for the files in the i386 folder I think. BTW I'm dual booting it with another instance of Windows XP Home, but I've done it many times before with the same setup but with a different motherboard.

 

[PC eye]

Hopefully you are trying to install that to a second partition on the drive. You can't install the files from the hd but can use the manual method of expanding the needed files from the disk at the command prompt.

"Expand

Extracts a file from a compressed file. Use this command to extract a driver file from a cabinet (.cab) or compressed file.

The expand command with the parameters listed below is only available when you are using the Recovery Console The expand command with different parameters is available from the command prompt.

expand source [/F:filespec}] [destination] [/d] [/y]

Parameters

source

Specifies the file to expand. Use this if the source file contains a single file. Source can consist of a drive letter and a colon, a directory name, a file name, or a combination. You cannot use wildcard characters.

/f:filespec

If the source contains more than one file, this specifies the name of the file you want to extract. You can use wildcards for the files you want to extract.

destination

Specifies both the destination directory and file name for the extracted file, or each individually.

/d

Lists the files contained in the cabinet file without expanding it or extracting from it.

/y

Suppresses the overwrite prompt when expanding or extracting files.

Examples

The following example extracts the file Msgame.sys from the Drivers cabinet file on a Setup CD and copies it to C:\Windows\System\Drivers:

expand d:\i386\driver.cab /f:msgame.sys c:\Windows\system\drivers

The following example expands the compressed file Access.cp_:

expand d:\i386\acces.cp_ c:\Windows\system32\access.cpl

The following example lists all the files in the Drivers cabinet file on the Setup CD:

expand /d d:\i386\driver.cab

Important
• The Driver cabinet file, which contains most of the drivers provided by Windows, includes thousands of files. Expanding all of the files from this cabinet file onto your hard disk will take time and a lot of disk space. It is recommended that you extract only the file you need from this file." http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/bootcons_expand.mspx?mfr=true

 

[GreenTea]

Thanks for the reply, but does anybody know why it's doing that?

 

[Arm_Pit3]

Try setting your biops to deafuolt, or fail safe mode.

 

[PC eye]

The main problem being seen here is not any bios setting but trying to dual OS the same version of Windows where the installer is running into conflist with the existing installation. If you were installing a new release of XP Home let's with SP2 while the first was an SP1 release the new boot.ini would be created allowing for this. A simple tip here is to use the Disk Management in the Computer Management found uinder Adminstrative Tools in the Control Panel to repartition the second one on the drive in order for a newer and maybe different version of XP to go on.

Most will use a second partition for storage if not running a different OS even a Linux distro in order to dual OS a drive. You are running XP's hardware detection process of the new board which now seems to be unable to create the new boot.ini file since you left the existing primary installation intact with the old boot.ini file there. In order for this to work here you would first have to delete the primary installation and reinstall XP to the primary. Then proceed to add a second installation to the secondary partition with the new boot.ini now being able to be modified for the custom installation.