problems installing xp on laptop

paulsm

I am trying to install xp home on my gf laptop , when I boot up from the cd it says press an key to continue but dosent register any key presses although it sees the keys in bios when changing boot pref etc, the laptop has no floppy drive just cd rom , I have tried the recovery disks from my own toshiba and it ghosts it on but when it starts upafter installing it says not complete installation or similar , my laptop is a different spec so I am guessing that is why, what do I need to do to install xp?

GunJack

what's on it at the moment ?? or haven't you wiped the HDD ??

paulsm

it had xp but it was corrupted so I formatted it

GunJack

your recovery disks are prossibly just that, recovery only, not fully-installable XP..can you borrow a full XP disk from someone and try that ?? good luck

paulsm

I have got a copy of xp but that just brings up the press any key to continue bit , are there different types of xp disk?

GunJack

if you've wiped the HDD you'll need a full copy of XP disk, not just a recovery (i.e. slimmed down, not full) one. if you now have ghosted images on the lappy might be better to start again from scratch. Completely wipe hdd, check BIOS for boot sequence is CDROM first, and try again...and good luck again..

devizes18193

if you cant get a copy of xp then it will need either a new version of windows or linux