Right then here is my problem that has been doing my head in for a while now

I have a Emilo EL6800 laptop 2.00Ghz Cerelon Processor with a 20GB hard drive in it

One day I flicked on my laptop and it came up with unable to find NTLDR which I know is that bloody boot up problem
Given that I could not be bothered to sort out the boot problem and I had a ghost image backed up nothing was on my HDD of importand proceeded to ghost the image onto my laptop

Around the second disk (4 disks as it was about 3GB image it had office and nortons on also)
It decided to crash and say something like unable to copy do you wish to save Ghost.txt something along those lines so I decided to just do a full install of Windows Xp

Installed the disk and proceeded to installed onto the hard drive after formatting it using NTFS(QUICK) the other NTFS just crashed

Got to around 17% and the audio.cab would not install odd I thought must have been the disk so I decided to create a few backups of windows XP and try them(under copyright laws I was able to do this as I owned the original copy)

So off I goes to killdisk the HDD and install onto the hard drive with new copys of Xp and around 22% it then crashed again

After 9 copy’s of Xp later (thinking to myself maybe I should have just looked into doing the boot sequence problem instead) I was no further into solving this.

So the CD drive was reading the cd so what could it be sat there puzzed though hard drive would store the data

So then I decided to create 3 partitions one the C:
One was D: which was 6GB
One was J: which was 5GB

I portioned them like this because it seemed that anything that was under 3-4 GB wouldn’t recognise as a drive letter

So hardrive wiped and onto installing windows onto the D: drive you can imagine to my amazement when windows finally installed onto the D drive

So down it boots and onto the second part of the install laptop boots back up and a new error message appeared again unable to install
System32/System/config/setup missing or corrupt
Something of that nature

Has anyone any idea how to install without using partitions or even better anyone know how to fix the HDD if that is the problem
Thank you for any help

Phil

i think your hd is on it's way out, replace it.

Sounds infuriating...

I've most often seen the ntldr error when a floppy's been left in the drive - hope that wasn't it or you'll feel parrot-sick!

Anyway, I'd be tempted to try booting from an XP CD. When it asks where you want to install Windows, use the available options and delete each partition in turn. Then set up in your desired manner (I'd suggest something like an 8Gb C drive and the rest as D).

I HATE it when things like this happen to me. Hope you get it sorted.

Edit: as Cyclone suggests it actually may be worth investing in a replacement, probably larger drive anyway.

no I use a External Floppy drive so I would not have left the floppy in I may have to look around for a new HDD

you know if any will work or just the fujitsu ones

arnt all the connectors the same like a Desktop PC you can get any HDD for them Maxtor, Segate, IBM ect

should be just a standard 2.5" ide drive.

Before you condemn your HDD, get yourself a copy of Memtest86 and test the memory.

I was having loads of issues during a re-install of a box recently, and the read/write errors I was experiencing were down to dodgy memory.

It's possible for the data that you're shifting from CD to HDD during the install is being corrupted whilst in buffer memory.

Worth a try for the £0.00 it'll cost you.

I would also make sure it's not the drive thats over heating as well. It happened to me when installing XP on my old laptop and i had similar errors to what your getting now.

Originally posted by LesMcQueen
I was having loads of issues during a re-install of a box recently, and the read/write errors I was experiencing were down to dodgy memory.


I've had that problem with my son's machine when I upgraded it from 98 to xp. It kept stopping in the middle of the install I eventually traced this to a faulty ram stick.

cheers all someone did say check the ram when it first happened

its not the CD drive overheating because it installs on the second partition perfect and more than once (AS I had to wipe it again)

Phil

Originally posted by Phil_howey
cheers all someone did say check the ram when it first happened

its not the CD drive overheating because it installs on the second partition perfect and more than once (AS I had to wipe it again)

Phil

that's what made me think it's the hard drive. Partitions physically alter where you are writing the data, so if it always fails on the first partition then it suggests an area of the disk surface failing. No harm in checking the memory though.