ahhhh! the stress....

Jonathanpbk

*deep breath* okay, i was lent this (slightly old) pc and router to mess around with to prepare me for a network+ course i'm about to go into. it had windows 2000 on it, and i wanted to use xp after a while so i tried to restart the pc and boot from an xp cd, but no dice... so to start it off, i ran the cd from 2000 and tried a new install from there. it needed a restart so off it went. when it restarted, it booted in to the xp setup but just after the partitioning part it fcuked up so i restarted and used a different copy i had which worked away... so i'm sitting there with xp running fine, but i wanted a copy of corporate edition running so i tried, once again, to boot from a cd at startup, but again, no dice... so i fdisked the machine, not really thinking of my potential startup problem. so when all was said and done, i did have a problem booting from cd (OR FLOPPY EITHER FFS) so now i'm getting a bit stressed. i check and re-check boot sequences and even resorted to taking all expansion cards out and moving cables around to make it the most basic (to no avail).... i need help here! i cant boot from cd OR floppy so technically the machine is useless and i'm losing my mind!!!! PLEASE HELP!!!!!

Jonathanpbk

by the way, its got an amd athlon 800mhz and 256mb of ram of some sort (not going to look!) and a nvidia tnt2 32mb graphics card (i think).... dont know what motherboard it is... (got ata100RAID ide controllers...)

Sherifu

Sounds strange, what disks are you trying to boot from?
Are you sure they're bootable?

Jonathanpbk

a windows 98 bootable floppy which i used to do the fdisking, and both windows xp pro and corporate, both tested on another machine... btw, i know the cd drives on the fcuked machine work cause i used them...

Sherifu

Check physical connections to cd drive.
Check its recognised in bios.
Other than that i dunno.

galwaydude18

why man are u using a win 98 boot disk? Madness! winxp setup lets you format and partition you HDD what everway you want it! Check your bios to make sure that it picks up your cd drive first! Then pop in you xp disk and you should be flying it!

Jonathanpbk

okay, i'm stressed, so i'm going to keep myself calm.... but i just said i did those things in the first 2 posts.....

osmethod

In your bios you should a "boot order" e.g.

1. CDRom
2. Floopy Disk
3. Hard Disk

If there not in this sequence put them in this sequence.

Then just reboot with the XP cd loaded and off you should go...

osmethod

Jonathanpbk

jesus, how many times do i have to say it!? i've done that! i even changed it to
1. cdrom
2. cdrom
3. cdrom

but nothing

galwaydude18

Dude go to bed and take a chill pill while your at it! Your stress level is mad high! Ever heard of leaving something that you cant get to work till you calm down and then try again later on! Maybe heres a thought for you! your hard drive could be faulty or on its way to dying! TAKE IT EASY!

Jonathanpbk

well, i've tried 2 hard drives, so i'm pretty sure thats not it, but you're right! i'm ****ed tired and i'm so stressed with the machine! i'm going to bed, i'll check up again tomorrow!

galwaydude18

Glad I got you to calm your self down. Ok we have elimated its not the hard drives so! Is your memory seated properly? Is there any scratches on the discs? Have you ever used them before to complete a full & successful installation?

osmethod

Ooops.. The old fuse is getting thin......

You may sit down - and go through it step by step again....
Put it back exactly as you got it....
1. IDE Disk - 1st IDE channel , Master
2. CDROM - 2nd IDE Channel, Master
3. Both detected in the bios => Cabling OK
4. In correct boot order - as youve stressed...
5. Check that processor, memory, pci/isa cards are all seated correctly

If you are happy happy with all that please answer the following...

1. Can you boot from your floppy disk still? If you can can you see the CDrom from Windows 98 command line?

2. Is the hard disk completely wiped at this stage?

Only offering some help...

osmethod

Jonathanpbk

well, i did some things and now i can boot from a floppy to a windows 98 command line and i can see the xp disk from there... is there any way i can run the install from the command line? i'm killing myself trying to work it out!!!

galwaydude18

Ok so! Sorry about the thick PM I just sent you! Not in the best of moods myself these days! Try typing d:\setup.exe (where d:\ is the letter of your drive). What did you exactly do?

Jonathanpbk

its not important... (its pretty stupid of me!) but whats important is that things are looking up... "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." btw... what PM though? i dont see any!

galwaydude18

Ok i did write a rude PM after my first one and then a third to apologise! Iv seen this before! Using your windows 98 disk run fdisk. Delete all partitions then create a new primary partition and make sure its set active! The reboot the pc with you win 98 floppy and format the partition. After that you should be able to access you cd drive and run the windows setup from there. once it reachs the formating stage make sure to convert the drive from fat32 to ntfs and do a quick format as you have already done a full format! try that and let me know what happens!

galwaydude18

dude just realised that i sent those pms to someone else! Im here trying to help you and someone else sort some problems out and i got my self all confused!

Jonathanpbk

okay, so i did that, but the "setup.exe" in the root directory on the xpcorporate cd is a windows based installer and i cant find the dos based one... you know when you put the cd in in windows, the autorun.inf throws up the setup screen asking you if you want to install windows, or other components etc.... so which file is the dos one? i cant work out what to do!!!

galwaydude18

dont think there is a dos file! Just the setup.exe one! did fdisk the drive, setup a new primary partition and make sure its the active one? if so after doing that when you finally access the cd drive what does it say when you try to run the setup.exe file? I assume the file name is the same as the one in the window xp pro disc!

Jonathanpbk

i fdisked the drive, made a 4gig partition, set it active, formatted it, and restarted the computer....
now when i look at the cd from dos, i see the contents of the disk (folders like i386 and support, and files like autorun.inf and readme.txt etc...) and there is "setup.exe" which says "This program cannot be run in DOS mode". Does anyone else know maybe!?!?!?!?

Jonathanpbk

okay then, how about someone answer this.... i know that this cd is bootable because i've just tried it on another machine... but what happens when it boots!? what file executes?? anyone?

Jonathanpbk

plehehehehease!!!!!!!

Blub2k4

The setup.exe is not what you want to run from a dos command line you will need to


make sure that your boot floppy has smartdrv.exe on it and start that as soon as you get to the command line before proceeding any further, otherwise your installation will take ages.
cd i386
winnt.exe
Then your Xp should install from dos no problem.

Jonathanpbk

thanks, i wont be able to try that til later, but sounds good!! ill let you know!

zAbbo

stop using warez

Jonathanpbk

ok

Chalk

bazH wrote:

stop using warez

lol wtf ???

galwaydude18

Blub2k4 wrote:

The setup.exe is not what you want to run from a dos command line you will need to


make sure that your boot floppy has smartdrv.exe on it and start that as soon as you get to the command line before proceeding any further, otherwise your installation will take ages.
cd i386
winnt.exe
Then your Xp should install from dos no problem.

Godd info! wasn't aware of that myself!

Jonathanpbk

yeah! cant wait to try it!

Jonathanpbk

does anyone know where i can get smartdrv.exe?

osmethod

You should be able to find smartdrv.exe on your windows 98 cdrom - assuming you have one...

from following I'm assuming your bios doesn't support booting from cdrom?
An alternative workaround...

I use "Smart Boot Manager" - download from
http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/download.html

It is able to boot atapi (not scsi) cdroms even if the bios doesn't support this feature.

See what u think and if you think its worth it it is very easy to work with and install.

osmethod

Blub2k4

Jonathanpbk wrote:

does anyone know where i can get smartdrv.exe?

I think www.bootdisk.com will have copies of the win98 boot disk with smartdrv on them, fairly sure in fact.
Good luck with it, I recommend doing the procedure that I pointed out as you will learn more about windows and dos there and you are on a learning curve, rather than using a boot manager, others may disagree but then they already know what they are doing.

MrShadow

create a set of winxp boot disks.
need 5 or six floppies. pain in the arse but it works.

stevenmu

As Blub2k4 pointed out, winnt.exe in the i386 folder should work fine but for the love of god make sure you have smartdrv working first, I left an install going over night before without it and it still wasn't done copying files by morning.

Blub2k4

MrShadow wrote:

create a set of winxp boot disks.
need 5 or six floppies. pain in the arse but it works.

or 4 even.