Trying to Install Win XP on a clean Hard drive

[MantaBeluga]

I have used Disk Eraser to clear a hard drive of XP loaded twice to the same drive! On reboot i have Black screen with "No Operating system" coming up.
I know there isn't one and the original XP Pro CD i have wont automatically start even though the BIOS is set to CD rom start first.

Can anyone please help???????????

MantaBeluga

 

[iss]

you canuse a win 98 boot disk. or a Single XP boot disk ( you can get it here) http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml and install xp by doing the following.

1. Start the computer with your chosen boot disk.
2. Change to the cdrom drive.
3. Go into the \i386 directory on the cdrom.
4. Run WINNT.EXE to begin the install process.

 

[MantaBeluga]

I don't have a floppy drive in my other computer to put the boot disk on!

Any ideas?

MB.

 

[iss]

is this XP disk a regular comercial disk or a copy? and have you checked it to make sure it is bootable? also how many optical drives do you have on your system and which one is the boot one listed in the bios?

 

[MantaBeluga]

Not sure what you mean by Optical drives. It isn't a copy and don't know how to check if it is bootable. The D drive is the CD rom drive. I have changed the BIOS to boot from Floppy first then CD, if i don't have a floppy in surely this isn't a problem is it?

 

[iss]

put the CD as first boot device.

 

[MantaBeluga]

Have discarded XP for the moemnt and have started with 98 as i can load XP after. I have Fdisk'd the hard drive and put 2 partitions on so have a total of 3 partitions on the computer. I have done SYS C: and have CD rom support and set to load from CD first but i am getting the message "CDR101: Not reading drive G"
Does this mean i need a driver for my Atapi DVD\CD drive?

I thought i was doing so well after partitioning and formatting all drives!!!!!!!!

 

[Paragon33]

With the MSRAMDRIVE as Drive F:\, it appears your G:\ CDROM is the culprit. They do get dirty and dusty inside and sometimes fail.