cryptwalk

Hey all, I recently formated the C drive on another PC as it was almost dead (slow was a understatment). I saved everything we needed onto CD and made a startup disk. Now the problem i'm having is I cant get XP on, could someone explain what I've got to do?

I started the PC with the bootup disk and started with CD rom support. I can now select a: c: e: f: so I select e: and setup, however it's saying this operation cannot be run from DOS. Why?

How do I start the setup process, i've done it before on my own and the answer is eluding me this time round.

HHxx

Boot from the cd

cryptwalk

I tried booting from the cd but it wont find the CD unless I have the startup disk in first.

The startup disk loads the drivers for the CD drives.

cryptwalk

I coudnt of picked up the Upgrade could I? Last version I had, had upgrade and full version. I assumed this was the same.

wiltshire_boy

Boot from floppy with CD drivers (Win9x boot disk will do), run SMARTDRV that you have copied to the floppy, change to your CD drive letter that has the XP disc in.
Type CD I386, enter, winnt, enter. Follow the instructions from there.

Roy.

cryptwalk

Cheers Roy, i'll try that.

suba

www.bootdisk.com

Fig

Have you been into the BIOS and changed the boot sequence so that it looks at the CD before floopy/HD?

cryptwalk

Yes, but when it says trying boot record from CD, nothing happens (ie, the CD Drive doesnt come into life) and it swaps to IDE1 or floppy.

IanW

Windows XP Boot Disk's from Microsoft

wiltshire_boy

A friend of mine has a "backup" copy of the corporate version of XP Pro that will not allow booting from the CD.
If you do it as per the instructions for a boot disk or download the XP bootdisk as above it should work fine.

wiltshire_boy

Also, in reference to booting from the CD drive, if the machine is a year or two old then not all CD drives and/or BIOS' support this function.

cryptwalk

How do I save this onto multiple disks as the file is too big.

IanW

should be a setup which will make you the floppy disks that you need IIRC

cryptwalk

Dude.

IanW

Have fun tonight Rob

Just think of all those updates!

cryptwalk

Oh the joy!

How many bloody disks does this take??

6 upto now!

MarkO

Why not just boot up in DOS, set up the CD driver, and copy the entire i386 directory from the CD to the HDD. Then you can boot up to the HDD, and install direct from there.

IanW

Nah this way is easier on me and Rob is less likely to get it wrong! ;-)