Windows Installation Problem

I am trying to help a friend with their computer. I have gotten everything to work and am now installing Windows XP. After going through the beginning of the installation (the 6 startup disks) I get a blue screen that tells me that there is a windows error (or something like that) and has to shut down to keep from eating itself alive (I am paraphrasing).

I am not sure if you know what screen I am talking about, if necessary I can copy down exactly what the screen says if you need more information.

I am stumped... at first I thought it might have been a problem with the drive, since it is new and never used, thought it might have been a dud, but I switched drives with the same outcome.

I don't know what other information I could give, but hopefully there is someone out there that has overcome a similar problem.

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

 

Go ahead and show us the error message.
"Startup" disks you say? Or are they install disks?
I ask, because Windows XP is larger than 6, 3.5 floppies!

 

I guess they would be best described as "boot disks"


I will get a picture or at least copy down what the screen says, and post it on here ASAP.

 

Never seen anybody use boot disks for an XP install. Just boot from the XP CD.

 

^^ yeah thats the best thing to do... boot from the XP cd and go from there probably best to format the hdd also just to remove any old viruses and spyware and shit (unless theres alot of important shit on it)

 

The 6 boot disks are if you cannot boot to cd. Basically, they're like the windows 95/98 startup disk, only on steroids. You really don't need them, since any computer you would consider installing XP on should boot to CD anyways.

Now when you do go to install XP, just boot from the cd. When you reach the section before formatting, and if there are any existing partitions on the hard drive, delete them and start fresh. Everything should work fine from there.

Good luck!

 

That's what I was thinking, Heero134.
An "EBD" or, "Emergency Boot Disk".
Those ONLY work IF you already have Winblows installed.
They are to repair missing or damaged files.
NOT to Install from.

 

insert the xp cd, restart your pc and see what develops

 

whats a floppy disk?

 

really who the fuck uses those.

 

Make sure CD is set to boot in your bios, im sure its possible to use the xp startup disks to install XP, if you cant boot from CD.

 

I "the fuck" use those. People think they're going out, but they're still extremely handy when working with older computers, updating the Bios, etc~

 

I attempted to boot directly from CD before and I seem to remember it not working. I didn't think too much about it because I always just booted up with the floppy disks and continued from the CD after that.

Are all XP Pro Cds bootable? Maybe I just need a newer CD-ROM, I think the one in this computer is pretty old.

Anyway, thanks for all the advice and witty remarks to make my horribly frustrating life with computers a little easier

 

I have tried this to no avail (sp?)


I even bought a newer CD-ROM to make sure it wasn't just the CD-ROM that had the problem, but still, it says it cannot boot from that CD.

In BIOS I have it set to First Boot Device: CDROM and I disabled the others. I cannot figure out what is going on here, but I am going to try and re-create the boot disks and install that way.

If anyone else has any ideas I would love to hear it. Thanks a lot for trying to help me out thus far.

 

If you're getting an error saying that it can't boot from the CD. The problem is obviously the CD. Get a different copy?

 

If it's an old Dell it may not be able to boot from the XP CD. Newer Dells will allow you to hit the space bar to boot from the CD.

If the system boots up but crashes you may be able to boot into Safe Mode and look at the error log. If it's just a driver you may be able to boot from the Recoverry Console and replace the bad driver.

But, yes, a lot of really old comps cannot boot from the CD rom once WXP is installed. If you make a new copy and install SP2, so long as you have the original in your posession and have a valid license, when you burn it some burning programs will allow you to insert a "Boot from CD now by hitting the spacebar" function into the boot process. If that doesn't work, you may need to buy a new HD, install XP on it, then install the old HD to get data off of it. If he was using WXP Home and was using the Admin account to surf and download email, when you reinstall XP it will wipe all that data. You can run scandisk on that disk, too.

But if you end up having to scratch the whole OS you will have to re-register the license over the internet.

If he has a virus you should clean it before reading data off of it and also protect your new HD.

 

If it was a fresh install on a formatted HDD, so there was no virus problem, or anything like that, I re-created the boot disks and went for another go at that.


This time, for some reason, it worked. Everything else went off without a hitch. Thank you everyone for being there for me in my time of need.

I am not sure if I have learned anything from this experience, but I am happy to finally have my friends computer back up and running...