subevo

I am trying to install XP home on a clean hard disk which has 1 formatted dos partition. The CD is a OEM original disk. I cannot get it to setup. Any pointers.

Fatman

What's the error message? You mention one DOS partition - you mean a FAT/FAT32 partition? Are you tring to maintain that partition with that data that's within it, or are you trying to nuke it and start with a clean/empty partition?

subevo

I have nuked the partition and creadted a new one and formatted c drive

Fatman

At what point does the installation fail?

subevo

I am booting from a win 98 startup disk. Drivers for my dvd rom and cd rom are installed. These read the xp disk, as I can see what files the cd contains but I get the message'this program cannot be run in dos' when I try to execute setup.exe.

XRS

Will your BIOS allow you to boot from the CD drive?

Fatman

The CD is made to be bootable. Setup.exe will be executed from a boot environment different from the one you're creating with your boot floppy. Boot from CD/DVD with your XP disc and it should work just fine.

subevo

From mr. gates' pals on the msn web site http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307848

I should be running be opening the i386 folder instead of setup. This will allow you to run setup from dos.

Thanks for your input.

Jodster

My XP Pro disk wasn't bootable either. In the end I installed WIN2K which was bootable and upgraded to XP.

Mark Underwood

Dead easy. On booting enter the BIOS and make suere that you set to boot from CD. Quit and save and then reboot. You will automatically go into XP setup and once the initial files have been loaded you will then have a choice of how you want the HD to be formatted. I suggest going for NTFS quick format. Just done my son's laptop today as it had a new hard disk and XP pro and service pack loaded/installed in just under an hour. Just now I am installing Linux for him in a seperate partition.

Fatman

Just a thought... is it an upgrade version of XP you're trying to install? It's quite possible that an u/g version wouldn't be bootable, as by it's licensing terms you should have a Windows O/S already installed.

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

go to microsofts site and you can down load a set of setup disks to install win xp , downloads on one file then writes to 6 floppy disks this will start the setup if the disk is not bootable

Fatman

According to NT FAQ: "All XP installation CD-ROMs are bootable. As a result, Microsoft has removed the ability to create boot disks from the CD-ROM. However, Microsoft has added downloadable files to its Web site that you can use to create XP boot disks:

XP Home Edition boot disks
XP Professional boot disks

You can't use XP Home Edition boot disks with XP Pro or vice-versa, and you can use boot disks only for new installations, not to initiate an upgrade.

Mark Underwood

he says its an OEM original disk. if that is the case the cd should be bootable.

Ken E

The CD will be bootable, but you may have to disable the option to boot from hard disk to get the prompt 'Press any key to boot from CDRom...' depending on what motherboard / bios etc.