Windows XP CD doesnt boot.

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IBN

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I recently bought a "Esys"( I know nobodys heard of it) PC. It has Linux Suse installed as standard.

The thing is that I want to install WIndows onto it. I put the bootable XP CD in but it doesnt detect it. It jumps staright into SUSE.

I check the BIOS and yes the optical drive is as the first drive to be booted. The XP CD is fine i tried it in another computer and it works.

I removed the Hard drive and connected it to my other system and it has the same problem, it goes straight to SUSE and bypasses the XP CD.

OK beacuse the harddrive make is Maxtor I downloaded the MaxBlast Bootable floppy disk and low level formatted it. And it still doesnt boot from the XP CD!!!

Guys I need some help!!!
 
I have it now hooked up to a spare 80GB Maxtor HD I have. The messages that comes up when it trieds to boot up from the Windows XP CD is


"Windows 2000 could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem
Could not read from selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the Windows 200(TM) documentation about hardware disk configurattion and your hardware reference manuals for additional information."

It is a Esys Motherbaord Socket 478 with a VIA P4M800 chipset.

Any input woulod be appreciated. I am out of ideas.
 
get a win98 floppy boot disk from here: www.bootdisk.com
start machine with 98 boot dis, with cd support.
navigate to the xp cd. find I386 directory, and run winnt.exe
xp install process shoud begin. just don't delete the unix partition. create another partition and install xp there.
 
Thanx for helping guys.

From following the guide HERE I dont know how to format the partition as FAT32. I cant find the option there to do so.

EDIT: I have "Set an Active partition" as a primary dos partition. Is that correct?
 
I used the below command for it to b formatted as fat32

"format.com C:"

My hard drive is now formating. Is this correct?
 
Don't format your system using FAT32. Let's try to find a way around this so you can get a nice, fresh NTFS partition.

Your CD-ROM works, right? So it should be able to boot from the XP CD.

I removed the Hard drive and connected it to my other system and it has the same problem, it goes straight to SUSE and bypasses the XP CD.
Click to expand...
Your hard drive moving to another system will not have any impact on its ability to boot from a CD.

This might sound silly, but the XP CD starts the install process automatically if no existing boot loader is found. If a boot loader is found (like GRUB with your SuSe system), the XP install will prompt you to 'press any key' to begin installation. If you don't press a key, it continues to the normal boot process.

I just want to make sure you aren't popping the CD in, taking off to get something to drink and coming back to find SuSe booting up... You'll need to press a key.

If that isn't the problem, try your boot menu. Most newer computers have it and it is usually brought up by pressing F8 or F12 around the same time you'd normally hit Del or F1/F2 to get into your BIOS. The boot menu will display a list of bootable devices and you should be able to boot from you optical drive.

Aside from that, the XP floppy setup is really the best answer here (as long as you have a floppy drive). https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic54139.html should only be done if you have no other option.
 
Very true Rick. I'll have to add a new reply to the tutorial on the disadvantages of installing XP on a FAT32 partition when I have a spare few minutes.
 
Thanks for replying!

Sorry i have already formatted the drive! I did do what you have said about the BIOS and pressing a key so that setup starts. But the thing is that that "pressing of a key" didnt even come up. It just jumped to the grub loader and then SUSE.

I went though the DOS processes up and until the end where when your supposed to enter winnt.exe however bad file or name kept coming up

So then I tried e: then winnt.exe and WinXP installation began.

The blue screened installation asked me to locate the setup file I think. So I just pressed enter on what was already up which was

e:i386 (i think)

Anywho then it started copying files then it like froze for soooo long. So now i restarted the computer with out the flopy in. The installation starts as notmal ie press R for recovery etc.....

But when i press enter for new installation this comes up:

Setup cannot locate find the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA).

Setup cannot continue, press F3 to quit.

ps
thanx a bunch guys for the help so far.

EDIT: But I can start the Recovery Console though.
 
OKay guys I found the reason why the EULA error is happening. Look at THIS from the Microsoft Website.

The solution is to partition and format the hard drive. This time I want to create an NTFS partition using the boot disk. Is that possible? If so how?
 
IBN said:
OKay guys I found the reason why the EULA error is happening. Look at THIS from the Microsoft Website.

The solution is to partition and format the hard drive. This time I want to create an NTFS partition using the boot disk. Is that possible? If so how?
Click to expand...

For your situation, NTFS is only possible using the XP setup diskettes provided by MS. This is because your DOS diskette which has FDISK on it does not support NTFS... It's too good for DOS. :)

Here's a link to the XP setup disks (You'll need 4 or so blank diskettes) http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...db-5039-4955-bcb7-4fed408ea73f&DisplayLang=en

Here's a comparison of NTFS vs FAT32.
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

The world won't collapse if you use FAT32, but NTFS is worth the extra effort in my opinion. You can convert later on too, but the conversion doesn't exactly pick the best cluster size. *cough* 512 bytes *cough*
 
Thanx alot guys for helping out.Much appreciated.

I finally diagnosed the problem. I had made a copy iof the origional WIndows XP CD that i had as a backup, just it case. And the copy of the CD wasnt bootable. Hence it failed to boot in to the CD!!!.

However I do have a bootable Windows 2000 Professional CD so I insatalled that and installed WIndows XP Professional as an upgrade from within inside Windows 2000, after i installed it.

Happy Ending.
 
Makes sense!

For the future, your burning program will need to make an exact duplicate of the CD. Perhaps it has an option to "Clone Disc" or "Copy Disc"

You won't be able to just click and drag or add the folders manually because that doesn't copy the area of the disc responsible for booting.
 
When copying windows disks, rather than extracting a boot image, telling nero to burn it etc..

1, use CDImageGUI to create a bootable ISO
2, use something such as nero or whatever to burn the ISO to CD.
 
Maybe I have a fix for others who have a similar problem (Only works with SATA tho)

My \system32\config\system file got missing the other day, so I had to load the XP CD. When I was starting it, it was asking to press a key to start from disc. I do this, and I get a blank screen : The system crashed. So, to solve this, since SATA was designed with PnP in mind, I booted the computer with the SATA connector unplugged, started the XP installation, pressed F6 for 3rd party drivers to load and plugged the SATA drive before loading the SATA chipset drivers on the installation. Then I ran the console, done a chkdsk and everything was fine again!

The problem wasn't exactly the same, but in IBN's case, removing the HDD would allow XP to start.
 
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