I had a problem with my computer so I took it to the shop. The motherboard was found to be defective. The store replaced the motherboard. The tech person told me that I would have to "Repair" my Windows operating system before my machine would work. He said to just install my Windows CD and select the "Repair" option. He said that it would basically reconfigure my operating system to work with my new motherboard.

So I get my machine home and I make the CD-rom drive my bootable drive. I insert my Windows XP Professional CD into the rom drive and start up my machine. I see the message "Boot from CD" displayed and then another
screen pops up right away.

The screen gives me options to either "Start from safe mode and other safe mode options", "Start Normally", "Start from last known good configuration".
But no matter what I select I get the blue screen of doom.

I remember doing the same thing with my friend's computer but her hard drive was empty and the Boot sequence would actually give me the message "Press any key to boot from CD"......which is what I want.

I checked all BIOS settings and I can't see why my boot-up CD is not being run properly. No matter what I've tried I keep getting the option screen described above which always leads me to the blue screen.

There was only one time I got a different message on startup. It was the message "Re-install from Windows XP Professional or something similar to that". I got that message because I was hitting the F8 key on starting the
machine. But when I selected the option to "Re-install from Windows XP Professional" I immediately got the above screen described above with all the regular start-up options.

Can someone please help me out and tell me why I'm not getting the Windows install CD to run properly and how I can get it to run. Thanks in advance for all your help.

Well I will take a stab at this for you. 1st enter the bios menu. You'll have to find the menu selection that changes your "boot order". Select your cd-rom drive to boot first. Save and exit your bios menu. The computer will restart have your WIN XP Pro disc in the cd drive. It will then ask you to press any key to boot from the cd. From there it will load XP pro installation program and choose the "repair" option on the screen. Hope that helps some.

ps- its booting from your hard drive 1st and thats why you are not seeing "press any key to boot from cd" screen.

[B]Hello and welcome to Techspot.[/B]

May I suggest that before you try and run the repair you take a look at this thread.

[url]www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html[/url]

I hope this helps Regards Howard

I made sure that it is booting from the CD. Upon startup I do see a message saying "Bootup CD" but not the message "Press any key to boot from CD". After that it tries to boot from my harddrive. It doesn't seem to recognize my bootup CD in my CD-rom drive.

In your bios make boot to cdrom the ONLY option. Eliminate all other boot options. Then, if/when you start the repair process the computer will reboot at some point. At that point re-enter the bios and add HD to the boot sequence, save, reboot and the install will continue.

I have had this kind of problem before and one way I was able to format it was to take it out and put the HD in another working PC and format it from the disk manager. Then take it back out and start the install on the desired computer.

One thing to remember is to select the SECOND repair notice during the reinstall. The first time you see the option to repair or install, pick install. Then you will get the license page which you have to push F8 to continue then you will get the second repair notice. Select repair and that will start the repair install.

Good luck

Thanks for the advice....but I think I have an even bigger problem now. I have a suspicious feeling that the Windows XP Professional CD I have is NOT a bootable CD. Because when I put my Windows XP Home CD in the rom-drive it booted up.

So I think it's possible that I installed my Windows XP Professional on top of an existing operating system. Can't be sure what OS because it's been awhile.

If that is the case, how can I get the operating system back onto my harddrive to synch with my new motherboard???

you could try booting into safemode and then running XP Pro disk, assuming you can get into windows.

Unfortunately that didn't work. Trying to boot into safe mode gives me the blue screen.

Seems like you`ve no choice but to do a full format and reinstall.

It also looks as though your Windows pro cd is damaged in some way.

So if you`ve got the xp home cd you`ll just have to use that.

Regards Howard

go to www.bootdisk.com and download the startup-floppy for Windows 98SE.
Set the BIOS to start from floppy. Boot from that W98-disk with CD-ROM support.
Now stich your WinXP-Pro disk in the CD, select the CD-ROM drive by typing in: D: or whatever drive-letter your CD-ROM has. Then type in: setup or install, don't know which routine XP uses. Then do your "repair in place".

No need to get all rash and do a complete reinstall yet. There are more ways to get it to work properly. Do as realbackstuff suggested and it should work fine.

Yeah, like he said, do what he said.

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I got the boot floppies and started the repair process but the installation hangs and restarts itself and repeats this process. During the installation process it did ask me for a DLL file for my audio card. AFter that nothing goes further as the installation process keeps restarting. I'm doomed to formatting my drive now.

could be 1 of 4

1. Either your cd/dvd drive is giving problems Or
2. Motherboard compatibility
3. Overheating
4. Original software/Corruption/cd-dvd player file from microsoft