Rebooting problems- Please Help !!!!!!!

Lo.j

Hi all

Sorry if I am not posting this in the right place. I'd be grateful for any help or pointers in the right direction.

I tried to clear my Windows ME computer, using the disc that came with it, for my daughter to use. To cut a long story short , that didn't work out, left me with a black screen and a flashing cursor. A friend installed Windows 98SE onto the computer for me ( from a previous computer I had ) which worked partially , but it now doesn't recognise my sound card or the CD Rom drive. I want to install Windows XP ( I have this on CD) on the computer as I was hoping to link this computer with my newer one so that DD has broadband also. However, as first computer doesn't acknowledge existence of a CDRom drive, I am a wee bit scuppered. I need to install something on floppy disk as that is all the computer recognises. Does this make any sense to anyone ? I hope so. I looked it up and it would take me a trillion floppies to copy the disks from the CDRom on my new computer but if that's the only thing I can try then that's what I'll do. Also, the old computer isn't linked to the internet any more ( don't know if this makes any difference or not ).Please help as I am sure the computer still has some life left in it.

Thanks for looking, I appreciate any help anyone can give me.

Lo.j

Browntoa

if you go into bios on boot up (normally F2 on boot up) you can change the boot options to boot first from Cd.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

put the XP disk in and restart the Pc and you should be away !

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Chriswil

Have a look at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994

Basically you need to know what version of Windows XP it is you are going to install, download that version and then install.

The other thing you could try is to change the boot order, ie the order in which your computer tries to load from. When you start the machine it will say something like press delete or F1 to enter the bios.

From there what to do is look for where it talks about device order, and change that to CD first. Save and exit the bios. Your Windows XP disk will hopefully now boot directly from the cd.

Basically your machine will be setup to look for a floppy disk first, if there isn't one, load from the hard drive. You can see this by entering any floppy disk - you are likely to get a "non-system disk or disk error", by changing the order it should allow you to load directly from the cd.

Although Windows will not see the cd-drive, the bios operates your computer, with windows sitting on top of it - therefore the bios kicks in before windows does.

Lo.j

Thanks for the help, I am on my way upstairs to try out the advice ! Many, many thanks.

Lo.j

I think it is time to admit defeat and put up the white flag.I got into the bios menu fiddled about with everything that I could, but still no joy. I am so stupid with computers I probably wrote the wrong stuff in the original post.I don't know if rebooting is even what I am trying to do. Basically I am trying to install XP ( on CD)on a computer that is working in a limited way in 98se ( one limitation is the lack of CDrom recognition ). I have tried to download the setup disks on floppy from the microsoft site, but it gets to 99% and then says my disk isn't big enough ( even though it told me I would need 6 to start with ). Boo-hoo

wonderfullife_2

Hi
Put your xp disc in your pc and restart your pc.
Press F2 when the machine is booting up, before the windows logo, and this will take you to the BIOS.
When you get to the BIOS, find the screen that allows you to change the boot sequence. Set it to boot from CD before your hard drive, then you usually save and exit.
Now when your pc starts it will go to the cd drive first, you should now see the xp disc and from here you will install xp.

Hope this helps

albertross_2

http://www.bootdisk.com/

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

albertross_2

98 will work on broadband, with a router..

toonfan

are you sure the CD rom is being recognised on boot up? if bios got a bit scary (and it can be) can you see it listed alongside the hard drives beofre the pc fires up w98? if not this could posssibly be a hardware connection issue