help Xp wont install!!

warrenl

My friend has just decided to do a fresh install of windows xp on his computer, he's copied everything he wanted and then erased what was on his hard drive, when he started his computer it asked him for his xp recovery disc to validate the installation, he doesn't have this, just a new copy of windows xp. Using the 'ultimate boot' cd he wiped drive c (including all partitions, everything this time) assuming there was something on there that told his computer that xp was still there, doing so gave him back 3g of memory. Now when he loads his pc and starts the xp installation it goes through all the process of loading files up until the first restart it does, however when the computer restarts it asks for the installation disk again and simply wont boot from the hard drive, when he presses to boot from the cd the whole process of loading files begins again, any ideas? :mad:

-TangleFoot-

Does this help?

warrenl

I'm afraid not (thanks though, a very good site!) He gets up to figure 14 no problem then when the computer restarts, it's as if nothing was done, figure 15 doesn't appear it just asks for the installation disk again and tries to reinstall all over again.

-TangleFoot-

In that case, he'll need to remove the disc temporarily after the first restart. Normally, booting from the Windows installation disc requires that you "Press any key to boot from CD..." which obviously isn't happening here.

warrenl

No, still no luck, we've tried all sorts including going to the bios settings to get it to boot from hard drive first, or the other way round to try disk first and having no disk in, He gets to figure 14, the machine restarts, he takes out the disk and all he is left with is a black screen with a flashing cmd line

-TangleFoot-

Then he has bigger problems than a finicky boot ordering system. Has he run any diagnostics on the HDD?

warrenl

Not that i'm aware off, would there be any problems on his hard drive if it was working fine before he deleted everything?

Browntoa

try removing the BIOS battery from the motherboard for a few minutes , then replace and turn back on to let it rediscover everything..

warrenl

yes looks like thats the last solution, he's running some diagnostics now, then he's going to try a boot fixing program and if that doesn't work i think we're down to the bios reset. (it's hard because i'm in france, he's in england)

warrenl

Thanks for the help, finally managed to get it sorted, he was able to half install windows 2000 (up to stage 14) then he booted the 'ultimate boot cd' up, used a program on that called MBR fix and then was able to fully install windows 2000, after that it was just a matter of an upgrade to windows xp