New HDD, can't load Win XP from CD

[Gainesy]

Model is a desk top, Packard Bell I Media 5093, bought mid-2002.
CPU Intel Pentium 4processor 2.53GHz
512Mb DDR Ram
DVD-ROM and CD read/write drives
64Mb GeForce 4, MX 440 graphics

Just replaced 80Gb hard drive with a Hitachi Deskstar HDD, 160Gb
Partioned and formatted HDD, put in Win XP CD to load and on booting get:

"Boot record from CD Rom Not Found
Boot record from IDE-0.. OK
Invalid system disk
replace and press any key"

BIOS sees the new HDD as Primary Master drive, also the CD & DVD drives.
Freezing the screen during start up has the following in ref to Primary master "UltraDMA Mode 6, S.M.A.R.T capable but disabled"

I do not have Win XP floppies only CD and this laptop is not capable of making floppies though I do have a couple of USB memory sticks. No cabling for linking laptop to PC.

Any pointers/ideas/ lend of a crash-axe appreciated. Especially ideas in simple terms.:)

PS All IDE/ power leads checked & look tight & fitted OK

[Bahn-Jeaux]

Well first off, if the CD isnt being recognised, have you tried using a different disc.
It wont matter if it is a copy as long as it is the same type, ie, home, pro etc then you use your own reg key to register it.

[Gainesy]

Sorry, should have said, disk reads ok in laptop, win 98 disk will not read in PC either.

[maxell]

Could be that there are no drivers installed for the cd-rom etc, you could try downloading THIS (http://www.ubcd4win.com/downloads.htm) burn it to cd then try and boot from it. If it boots then swap the cd for the XP disc and try installing then

[Keef]

Is the BIOS of the PC set to boot from CD?

Is "CD" in the boot list at all?

[Gainesy]

CD is first on boot list in bios keef, will try maxells idea and report back

[ORAC]

WIN XP Setup Floppy Disks (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55820edb-5039-4955-bcb7-4fed408ea73f&DisplayLang=en)

[Gainesy]

Laptop wont take 31/4 floppies Orac

[Bahn-Jeaux]

Could be your CD drive, had the same thing myself a while back, other PCs read the disc fine although this wasnt in boot mode.
Have you tried booting from the disc in your laptop, no need to proceed, just see if the boot sector is damaged and unreadable.

[Gainesy]

Win CD Boots OK in laptop, will make some floppies on mate's pc this evening & try that . Back tomorrow, thanks to all meanwhile.

[Saab Dastard]

You have both CD and DVD drives - have you tried loading it from each?

It may be that your DVD drive is the bootable drive, not the CD-RW.

SD

[spannersatcx]

One of the first things you will see during the installation process is “Press F6 if you need to install additional drivers…” The message only appears for 6 seconds before the installation continues. You will need to press F6 to load additional drivers if you are using a SCSI controller card, a SATA controller card, or a RAID controller card that is not natively supported by Windows. Check with your controller card manufacturer for the latest drivers.

In order to install an operating system, you will need a partition on which to install. If a partition does not already exist, you must create one.

[Gainesy]

New drive is formatted & partitioned. Downloaded floppies from Msoft on mates PC last night Put in first of the six and it came up with:

File \biosinfo.inf could not be loaded
The error code is 519
Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.

Will have a search on the error code.

search says 519 means "Exceed maximum log file number".

Now I,m way out of my depth.

[BOAC]

From 'another place' - if you have not got a W98 boot floppy I would advocate getting one!

"The best way to solve this problem is to:

1. Boot with Windows 98 Boot Floopy (Make sure that your Win XP CD is in the CD/DVD Drive)
2. at the A: / prompt type D: then press enter
3. at the D: / prompt type cd i386 then press enter
4. at the D: / i386\ prompt type copy biosinfo.inf C: then press enter
5. remove floppy disk & CD
6. restart pc
7. select normal "

Obviously drive letters to taste.

[Gainesy]

Tryed that but can't get an A: or D: but only A:\> and D:\> prompts so typing in i386 gives "invalid directory" message.

Where the red smiley has appeared it should be colon, fwd slash.(Top left to bottom right diagonal, next to Z on keyboard)

[BOAC]

A bit confused!
What are your drive letters?
Did you format the new hard drive as a system drive? If so, can you boot into DOS from it?

[tony draper]

Just loaded XP on a new formated hard disk a couple of days ago,the machine would not boot from the xp CD it must not be bootable,so I loaded win 98,(my win98 CD is bootable, looked at the XP CD clicked on set up and away it went loading on top of the 98 instal, bit long winded but it worked.
I recall windows 95,if you had a new formated disk you had to load dos on first,leastwise with the version of 95 CD I had.
:rolleyes:

[ORAC]

TRy deleting the current partition and then creating one and formatting it using XP during the installation itself.

[TURIN]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but I didn't want to upset the 'use the search' police.

I have a similar problem as the original post.
I have an 80G HDD which I have partitioned 60/20 (C/D). I had Win ME originally but this crashd on a regular basis so I have been trying to upgrade to XP. I get part way through a load and it crashes, tried it many times but it always crashes, not even in the same place, it just randomly fails.

So I formated the C drive, and tried to clean install XP, it gets part way through and comes up with an error message, again a different message each time I try it.
I left the original disc format as FAT32 so I reloaded WinME (minimal load but with a better graphics driver) and tried to upgrade to XP. It still crashes part way through the upgrade load.

So I'm back with my old Win ME but frustrated to all hell.

Any ideas?

I have thought of throwing it through the window already!:*

[Cypherus]

A lot of people appear to be unaware of the fact that you do NOT need the 4, 5 or 6 setup disks in order to install Windows 2000 and XP. A common Win98 boot disk such as the Boot Disk Essentials diskette link below can be used to install these OS's. Here's how to do it:

Start the computer with your chosen boot disk.
Change to the cdrom drive.
Go into the \i386 directory on the cdrom.
Run WINNT.EXE to begin the install process.

http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

[Saab Dastard]

An inability to complete a clean installation is often down to corrupt data on the CD, or a problem with memory.

Try copying the contents of the CD to hard disk - any errors reported? Then try making a CD copy of the installation CD. Do a memory test - there's plenty of freeware memory test programs out there.

SD

[TURIN]

Well I'm not entirely sure what I did right but it's worked.
After 2 years of trying off and on, I have got Win XP.

I loaded it over the top of my Win ME, even though every trouble shooting guide I have read says not to. It failed initially with a setupdd.sys address date/stamp error message. I rebooted and carried on with the load sequence. 45 mins later it's in and running. Marvelous. Cheers.:ok: