Booting/installing Windows XP from disk problem

Couldn't think of a better title, sorry!

I recently bought a second hand machine, which had a serious conflict with a game I installed.

Cutting a long story short, it completely crashed, and I couldn't reformat at all. I eventually reset some of the BIOS settings to get vaguely somewhere, but I can't reformat XP on it at all.

A very good friend of mine did a low-level diagnostic on the hard drive, and there's nothing wrong with it.

Now onto what actually happens. At start up (with the XP disk inserted), the PC starts to boot from disk, and gives the normal "Startup is inspecting your hardware's configuration ....." message, followed by the normal blue "Windows Setup" screen. Along the bottom white strip where all the installation information is given, I get the "Press F6 to install a third party .... etc", and the "Press F2 to run Automated Recovery", and then nothing at all, and the CD drive stops.

I know the XP disk is fine, as I installed it on my other PC (that hard drive also had the same treatment as this one), and I really do trust my mate's techie knowledge, but I can't go running to him everytime there's a problem!

I think it's a motherboard problem, but I'm convinced it's reparable. I know there's not a lot to go on there, but really, there's nothing much it's doing!

Any ideas people?

if it was mine i would pull the ram out leaving in just 1 stick download a copy of memtest boot from cd and check the ram sticks one by one if they pass i would clean the xp disc and swop the cdrom out

if it was mine i would pull the ram out leaving in just 1 stick download a copy of memtest boot from cd and check the ram sticks one by one if they pass i would clean the xp disc and swop the cdrom out

The XP disk is fine, and I've swapped the CD-ROM as well. The thing is that I'm effectively starting from scratch on that PC. Although the software for a load of stuff is in there, I can't actually use any, because XP isn't on there.

Ta for the memtest suggestion.

Cheers mate.

happyhippy..................

Go to http://www.computing.net/ and do a search for your problem..

I cannot help but on several occasions, this site has pointed me in the right direction for a "fix" on my problems.

Hope this helps

Crosser.

Cheers for that crosser; a truly geeky site

Perhaps I ought to have called the thread 'reformatting/installing XP problem', to make it clearer.

..........................

Couldn't think of a better title, sorry!

 

Now onto what actually happens. At start up (with the XP disk inserted), the PC starts to boot from disk, and gives the normal "Startup is inspecting your hardware's configuration ....." message, followed by the normal blue "Windows Setup" screen. Along the bottom white strip where all the installation information is given, I get the "Press F6 to install a third party .... etc", and the "Press F2 to run Automated Recovery", and then nothing at all, and the CD drive stops.

 

As a hunch as i don't know any specs (mobo) of your machine, maybe a HAL/ACPI issue.

With the MS XP Installation CD in your bootable CD/DVD drive, boot up the installation the first thing you'll see at the bottom of the screen is the option to press F6 if you need to install a SCSI or RAID controller. Don't press F6. Press F5 instead. This will take you to a separate menu of Hardware Abstraction Layer's where you can choose an appropriate HAL that supports ACPI. The choices will be:

*ACPI Multiprocessor PC

*ACPI Uniprocessor PC

*Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC

*Compaq SystemPro Multiprocessor or 100% Compatible PC

*MPS Uniprocessor PC

*MPS Multiprocessor PC

*Standard PC

*Standard PC with C-Step i486

*Other

In the majority of installations the 'Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC' HAL is the one you will want to use.

A few cautions are also in order:

Obtain and install the latest BIOS for your motherboard before you begin the XP installation.

Equally as important as using the proper HAL on ACPI capable systems, is NOT using it on systems that are not ACPI compatible. The install may complete but the system will almost surely fail to start when it reboots.

As a final note, to determine if your computer was detected as being ACPI enabled:

Right click My Computer then click Properties > Hardware > Device Manager.

Expand the entry called Computer.

If the entry is 'Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC' you're all set. If it says 'Standard PC' the computer BIOS was not detected as being ACPI capable.

Source 'theeldergeek'

Let us know.

Thanks for that itosan; I'll have a go in the morning. That PC is where the OH is sleeping, so I'm not messing about now!

What specs would you want to know to narrow anything down, in any case?

I'll send a report when I've done the suggestions, and thanks for all the help.

Right then.

Haven't got any blank disks, so can't do the memtest thing, and pressing F5 at the "Press F6 ....." bit, didn't do anything, save for it getting to "Loading Windows Executive files", before the CD-ROM stopped.

Thanks for that itosan; I'll have a go in the morning. That PC is where the OH is sleeping, so I'm not messing about now!

 

What specs would you want to know to narrow anything down, in any case?

 

I'll send a report when I've done the suggestions, and thanks for all the help.

Whats the model of the PC and or Systemboard?

Right then.

 

Haven't got any blank disks, so can't do the memtest thing, and pressing F5 at the "Press F6 ....." bit, didn't do anything, save for it getting to "Loading Windows Executive files", before the CD-ROM stopped.

So you never get the :-

Windows Setup

Setup could not determine the type of computer you have, .......................................

Screen? When you press F5?

Have you done a complete BIOS reset?, i say this because just this w/e i had problems with a Gigabyte board and all IDE access was not in DMA/UDMA. Even after a BIOS default setup, the mobo was behaving like there was a problem but as an engineer i told myself there wasn't and after this and that i was right.

Whats the model of the PC and or Systemboard?

This was actually one of the things which was worrying me. As I said, it's second-hand, so due to a load of the hassles I'm having with it, I don't know a lot about it. The machine itself is an emachines 270 (shudder), and the BIOS is AMI.

The reason why I was a bit worried about it, as it was obviously sold with everything pre-installed.

So you never get the :-

Windows Setup

 

Setup could not determine the type of computer you have, .......................................

 

Screen? When you press F5?

Nope. Nada.

Have you done a complete BIOS reset?, i say this because just this w/e i had problems with a Gigabyte board and all IDE access was not in DMA/UDMA. Even after a BIOS default setup, the mobo was behaving like there was a problem but as an engineer i told myself there wasn't and after this and that i was right.

Yes. The BIOS is set to all defaults.

Use somthing like Hitachi drive fitness test to perform a low level format on your HD (this will take a few hours). Run windows XP setup from CD again & see what happens.