XP Professional Setup Problem.

[Skwowwy]

Hello,

This is my second post. But anyway, a friend of mine wanted to install XP Pro, but there are problems.

He has Windows 98 and wants to do a clean install of XP. After having entered the serial key and all that stuff, at the very begin of installing, a DOS like window appeared, asking for XP's CD. He has been using it all the time. He tried everything, but there was no workaround to it.

So, do you have any suggestions? He really wants XP Pro badly. All his hardware is compatible with XP, except of his dial-up modem (he ran Compatibility Check).

 

[dijital]

clean install usually includes reformatting the drive, is this what he is doing?

 

[gothic]

I have seen this before, and it has something to do with the recognition of the CD drive. I think what happens is that your BIOS quite happily sees the CD, boots from it and the first stage of XP install begins, up to when it copies the files needed for setup, then there's a reboot and after that XP isn't picking up on the fact that there's a CD.
A workaround, i'll get bytes-back to have a butchers, he's sorted that problem out before.

BYTES-BACK, you there??????

 

[Bytes Back]

Hmmm, this problem I have seen twice before.

1. When you install xp using a 98 or me boot disk, the boot disk creates a ram disk which it gives the letter after you last hard drive partition (ie D) the cd rom becomes E. On the first reboot it loses the ram disk and the cdrom becomes D. OMG goes XP and the can't find the cd anymore.

Solution. Install XP by booting from the CD

2. Some boards need there bios upgrading, as when XP tries to use its own drivers it loses the cdroms. as an example an ASUS a7vpro had this problem. Upgraded the bios and all was well.

 

[l0g0ut]

or you can boot the computer using floppy disks supplied by microsoft here for xp home ... and for xp pro here

 

[Bytes Back]

another option is to copy the i386 folder from the cd to the hard drive, and then open and run winnt32.exe from windows or winnt.exe from dos.

Thanks to Lonman for that one.

 

[TR!GG3R]

or he could make it easy 4 himself n juss go in the bios n change the first boot device from floppy to cd then when everythin is done jus either keep it as is or change it back

 

[Skwowwy]

Thanks for the suggestions. He appreciates it. He'll try everything you said till it works.

If it still doesn't work (which is highly doubtable), I'll let you know.