Re-formatting problem

Fizman

I had one or two problems with my recently built rig and had to reformat my HD. Now XP isn't installing properly for me. When I select boot from CD....and that line appears at the start of boot....it is now quickly followed by " NTLDR is missing" and will go no further in the boot process when this appears. Anybody have any ideas what may be causing this/how to resolve it?? Getting very irritating having a 2k euro system sitting around being idle.

ethernet

That doesn't seen to be booting from the CD. With an OS installed and when booting off a Windows XP CD, the Windows CD says: "Press any key to boot from CD" (or similar). I highly doubt ntldr is missing from the CD.

Have a look at boot priority in the BIOS and make sure CD/DVD drives come before your hard drive.

Fizman

Sorry, I should have mentioned my boot priority. I have tried it with CD as 1,2,3 in priority. Also With 1-Cd, 2-HD, 3-CD. Etc, etc and still no luck!!:(

The Muppet

how many cd/dvd drives have you got in it?

Cd/dvd should be set as your first boot device. Make sure you are saving the changes to your bios before rebooting.

Fizman

Just the one drive....and yes I have been saving before exiting. At first the blue windows setup screen had appeared, and it had gotten to about 10-11% of install before it started saying that some file was missing, giving me the option to skip or retry. Retry would result in same, and skip just resulted in lots of other files apparently missing then i just cancelled. On reboot this " NTLDR is missing" and has been there since!!

Note:This is all while XP boot CD is in drive.

zebulba99

try to clean the cd, may be a scratch on it or so. Had the same problem few years ago, but if tryed quite a few times and it finally worked.

Kimbot

When the skip or retry message comes up, eject the cd and put it back in, as soon as you hear it getting faster hit enter and it should work.

zebulba99

just dont fart, it may cause unexpected vibration of the drive

Fizman

jonny24ie wrote: »

When the skip or retry message comes up, eject the cd and put it back in, as soon as you hear it getting faster hit enter and it should work.

I'm not even getting that far anymore.
Seriously annoying me now. The CD has a few scratches alright, but my mate used it today to format a HD with no problems. Might have to just try and format it in his pc by the looks of it.

Fizman

Ok so i've gotten it back to where I can create a new partition on the drive and windows setup begins. However after a certain percentage that "autofmt.xxx" is missing, skip or retry!! Doesn't seem to be getting past this even though i take out cd, wipe it, put it back, same again, and again, and no result!!

Capt'n Midnight

I usually copy the i386 folder to the local hard drive if I hit any problems or the CD looks dodgy, and then run setup from there.

sometimes it's the cd drive

you can format a drive with a few files on the CD,
you need all of the CD to do a successful install

Fizman

Ya its i386 thats seems to be having the issue. I have XP installed, but somehow internet explorer isn't installed!! Must have been one of the files that it missed on setup. Will try and see if copying i386 to c drive makes a difference.

When I put the xp cd in and try to add additional windows components (such as IE) it states that msmgs cannot be found in i386. Grrr.

Boggles

Fizman wrote: »

Ya its i386 thats seems to be having the issue. I have XP installed, but somehow internet explorer isn't installed!! Must have been one of the files that it missed on setup. Will try and see if copying i386 to c drive makes a difference.

When I put the xp cd in and try to add additional windows components (such as IE) it states that msmgs cannot be found in i386. Grrr.

You could borrow your mates cd drive.

The Muppet

Its more likely that the CD (disk) is damaged, particulaly as its sticking on the same file all the time.