If he was able to get into the beginning of the XP install then he is obviously able to boot from his CD.
It sounds like the computer is having problems reading the CD. The CD may be dirty, scratched, or no good. The cd-rom may even be no good. Possibly a bad IDE cable could cause this too, but that I am not sure of so I could be wrong about the cable thing.
No, everything is set right, and hooked up right. It is just that that message comes up when I want to start windows. Is it maybe the hardrive, because I am using my old hardrive on new stuff. It is an 80gig.
first posting. I went thru somewhat similar problems, suspected CD, CD drive,
power supply, and even the new mobo. cheap RAM was the offender, it corrupted the install of XP. are you reusing old RAM? just a thought to
consider.
if you have a non-oem software make sure you don;t need to install 3rd party drivers prior to the installation. if you need to, press F6 when prompted and follow the instructions.
hardware or software It might be hardware eg: memory or hard drive if you got spare try to sawp; software: xp cd disks not good try another copy ok! good luck :giddy: