Hey, I hope you guys can help me with this.

[hal3246]

First, I'll add, pop ups are evil!! and all those uninvited installs, anyways, down to business.

These nasty critters somehow messed up my pc and I decided it would be smart to reinstall. I had previously installed my copy of windows that a friend had given me, it obviously worked, key is fine. First time, I already had windows installation on the hard and I loaded the windows installer just fine, rebooted and then went into the windows installation process, reformatted, blah blah blah.

Anyways, this time, I was having troubles just getting into one name and went under another, did the same thing, got the updated installer files that it showed, rebooted and went into the windows installation process, reformatted and started to install, and that was when I got some wierd error message, I wish I had the exact message, I'll try to get it later on my old HDD and see if it'll give it to me again.

Anyways, since this error message was preventing me, I had thought maybe purchasing a new HDD would pix my problem, nope. I followed the instructions, made sure the cables were in place, jumper was set to master or single drive, before I had installed the new HDD, I had removed my old one and put the new HDD driver utility into the cd drive and shut it down and then continued to proceed to install the ney HDD.

After the HDD was alset and got the message that I could install an OS or reinstall now, I inserted my windows xp pro disk and rebooted, went into the bios, made sure that the boot priority was set to cd dvd drive first and rebooted again.

All I got was this NTDLR is missing, press ALT + CTRL + DEL to restart.

One more question, is it possible to have a non-bootable win xp pro disk?

 

[hal3246]

Anyone, any help? LOL, I know I'm sure there is some answers amungst this forum, but something just not looking up the right search.

 

[lipe123]

Sounds like a bogus xp disk, because ntldr missing means the system is trying to start from ur hdd. And u said u made the boot seq to cd-> hdd.

Also u dont need to run some weirdo hdd isntall disks or whatever, just let xp setup create the partitions and quick format during the setup.

Make sure your ide controller is not on raid mode in the bios.

 

[hal3246]

Ok, I'll double check the bios, last time I remember, raid was set to off, but I"ll double check.

The boot sequence before, I was in windows, the actual installment, inserted my xp cd, clicked on install, entered my key and then it downloaded some updated install files and then rebooted into the windows xp installation, refortmatted, did quick, and then started to install, got some wierd error message, I figured by the meaning of the error, sounded like it couldn't find my ID that was stored on the HDD before it rebooted, probably my cd key.

I bought a new HDD, installed it and stuck the windows cd in and rebooted, just gave me the NTLDR is missing blah blah blah to restart

I'll run through those you mentioned again, and hope it recognized the darn xp disk, I don't know if the xp disk is bogus, considering I've used it before, and it worked.

 

[almcneil]

When you restart, do you ever see a message asking you if you want to boot from CD? If not, then the CD drive is not higher than the HDD in your boot sequence. Go back into BIOS and make sure that the the CD/DVD drive is higher in the boot squence than the HDD.

 

[hal3246]

My boot sequence is as follows

CDDvD
HD
disabled (was floppy, no floppy installed)

 

[almcneil]

OK, now when you restart, is there a prompt asking you if you want to boot from CD?

 

[hal3246]

Alright, I did see this, not sure if this might be the problem

Onboard AC'97 Audio -----------------enabled
Onchip SATA bootrom ----------------enabled !!!!!!!!!!
Onboard Promise Controller ----------enabled !!!!!!!!!!
Operating Mode ----------------raid !!!!!!!!!

Now, just wondering if those three that I have with the !!!! could cause my problem, I don't have either set up?

I'll first chang operating mode and see if that helps, if not, then I'll disable promise controller, but going to disable the SATA

 

[hal3246]

Ok, that failed, grrr, this is aggrivating, I really don't want to waste money on another xp disk, I know this one works, it has in the past

 

[hal3246]

Ok, so I reinstalled my old HDD and booted my pc, I'll let you guys know what error message I get, it shouldn't take long.

 

[hal3246]

"An error has been encountered that prevents setup from continuing.

Setup was unable to retrieve the Product Identification of the system you are installing. The Windows XP media may be damaged.

Please contact Microsoft Support.

Click OK to view the setup log file."

Log file as follows.

"FATAL ERROR.

Setups was unable to retrieve the Product Id because of the following error: RegOpenKeyEx(System\Setup\Pid) returned error 2 (2)."

I hope this may help, or at least explain what my original problems is.

 

[hal3246]

Anyone, any ideas?..

I thought of floppy boot disks, I'm going to give this a try, but some opinions would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[hal3246]

....bump....

 

[hal3246]

And to answer your question, no there isn't a prompt that asks to boot from cd.

 

[hal3246]

Any ideas guys? LOL, any insight?

 

[hal3246]

Hey guys, it's all fixed now, got myself that windows xp pro sp2 boot floppys, 6 on them, woa. Anyhow, went in and did a full format and reinstalled windows. I also did a chkdsk /r before that.

So, something I did got rid of the disk read error alt + ctrl+ delete

Anyways, for those that said something, I would like to thank you for your help.

 

[almcneil]

For future reference, you don't need to do a chkdsk before running a reformat. chkdsk checks the file system while the reformat installs a new file system for that partition.