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View Full Version : WinXP installation problems - help needed


Wally
10-14-2005, 06:10 AM
I've just built a A64 rig, all hooked up and POSTing, but for some stupid reason WinXP refuses to install. I've tried Home and two different Pro discs.

What i mean is:

1: in BIOS, i select CD drive as primary boot device, save, whack CD in and restart
2: Comp POSTs, boots form CD, and asks me to select a partition to install to. I select a partition, it formats the partition, and then does the ol' "copying files to C:\WINDOWS" like system32.dll etc.
3: it finishes this, prompts me to remove any devices from the floppy drive, then restarts, saying Installation will be completed after reboot.
4: Reboots, boots from CD again, and tries to get me to repeat steps 1-3. it does this indefinitely.

I took the remove floppy device to mean the XP disc i booted from, but when i do this it just hangs, giving me "booting from CD/DVD", before moving onto nVidia boot thing (nFoce 4 board). it won't boot from HDD, even though it's all pluggered in and XP is on there. I was under the impression that at some point during XP installation you were given a GUI similar to the XP logon screen, where you entered your product key etc, as this is what ahppened on my old pc, but i can't get this far.

it's probably a really stupid and obvious problem i've just overlooked something silly, but what's going on? Please help me, this is my fist decent pc, and it's so frustrating having it sat on my desk ready to go component-wise but refusing to install XP properly.

S1nF1xx
10-14-2005, 09:32 AM
I would imagine you have a SATA HDD. Go into the BIOS and check the boot order. Make sure the SCSI/SATA option is selected right after the CD-ROM

The Bryophyte
10-14-2005, 09:37 AM
It sounds to me like you are just not seeing the HDD as a boot device also. Like Wally said, you might need to change the boot order to include SATA/SCSI. Since windows at least begins its install routine, it sounds like it's not a problem with actually seeing the drive, just a problem with booting to it.

Grimmda
10-14-2005, 09:52 AM
Um on top of those great options that might resolve the problem how about this one.

You said you selected a partition? Is this the only OS on the HD? Is the partition you selected the "active" one? That knows to boot?

Obviously yes you're right to take the CD out and from there it should boot from the HD. Just blast XP down in one big chunk onto the hard drive and make sure it's set to boot in the bios and it should come up.

Wally
10-14-2005, 10:59 AM
I was right, i had overlooked something simple - i've got to put the SATA driver file on floppy and put it in similarly t BIOS flash, silly me :p
Thanks