Problem installing windows..
 

Processor: AMD Athlon XP 1800
Motherboard: MSI with a via chipset
RAM: 650mb PC133 DDR
HD: 80gb Western Digital (70gb NTFS - 100mb /boot 1gbswap 8.9gb / )
Media: 56x cdrom

I decided to wipe out my hdd is reinstall everything because I had gotten bored one day.. I went into bios and changed my boot order so it loaded cdrom first then hdd-0. Stuck in the windows XP cd to install - once it was done formating the drive and copying files, it rebooted and I got an error ( after it asked me if I wanted to boot the cd - which takes me back to the first screen of the installation ) saying that it couldnt load the operating system.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your time

-Ruse

IT's the original install for winXP right? and Bootable I assume from your statements.

When you formatted, did you also delete and remake the partitions?

Its the original install disk if thats what youre asking - so yes, its bootable.


That was how the drive was formated before I wiped everything but now Im remaking it into the same sizes so it shouldnt be an issue. I deleted ALL the partitions when I formatted. I only remade one under the windows installation - the NTFS partition that is 70gb.

And it went through the file copying and all that.
When it asked to reboot, was the cd in the drive? take it out if it wasn't. (I'm assuming it was from the info you've already given.)

Is it a SATA or RAID drive?

SATA
Ive tried both ways - with the cd in and without.

This happened to me when I reformatted. For some reason, Windows' formatter couldn't figure out how to delete all partitions and format the drive. I had to toss in my Mandrake CD and have drakx take a look at it. It pretty much said WTF, you need to reformat everything before anything will work. This was after "formatting" the hard drive 6 times.

But, Mandrake fixed it and everything went fine after that. What's my point? Get a third party formatter, whether it's fdisk (is that from Windows?) or something lesser known, or linux.

I'll have to give that a try - Im running off of a live linux cd atm so it shouldnt be too hard

K I just fdisked hda to the size I want and changed the partition type. Im going to now reboot and stick in the windows CD and see what happens..

is the SATA drive on hdd0 ? i think hdd-0 is on the standard IDE channel, see if are other options for boot devices, you want to boot from the SATA drive not HDD-0

bios is looking to HDD-0 for the boot info, but you want it to look on the SATA drive.

It doesnt have the option of booting from SATA and when I tried to install windows on the pre-formated partitions ( partitioned via gentoo and phlak ) it didnt work either time so Im not sure whant Im going to try next... :(

Have you got your SATA drivers on a floppy at hit F6 at CD boot up?

You may need to set your BIOS to RAID or just basic SATA. Try tinkering with those.

I tried to swap out the SATA drive for an old IDE drive I had lying around - still the same problem...

( dont have the sata drivers on floppy atm but I can throw some on one I think )

is it a retail copy of XP or is it a proprietary copy?

Is the Windows bootloader partition correctly created and placed? Perhaps it got corrupted after the installation.

Its a retail copy.

Im geussing it did get corrupted but Ive tried 3 different disks now ( 1 retail that I own and 2 copies from a few guys I know ) and none of them work...

hmmmm... run the disc from startup, when it prompts you, select "repair", then it should take you to MSDOS, type FIXBOOT and see if that does anything.

fixboot didnt work

NM - going offline. Good luck.

Try this. Go into linux of your choice, and format the entire thing as, say, FAT32. It'll probably make you format a slice as linux-compatible. Do it. Then reboot into the windows CD.

1) Delete the partitions and format the whole thing as NTFS

2) Or, convert the FAT32 to NTFS and deal with the linux piece later.

If that doesn't work, I have no idea.

It's not detecting the SATA drive after copying the files.

Put in the SATA drive, set the BIOS as per manufacturer guidelines for your motherboard (check their forums for help too)
Get the SATA drivers unzipped to a floppy.
Put it in and then bootup with WINXP in cd. F6 when prompted to use the SATA drivers.
Wipe the partitions with the CD util. Reboot.
Same again re SATA drivers, go into setup.
Create a partition, NTFS format and go ahead as normal.

Report back.

I guessing drivers arent the whole problem... I tried to swap out the SATA for my old IDE and install and I got the same error.

didnt work but thanks for trying :(

Well you've got a real puzzler there. It's hard to do more than guess, given the other advice you've received and the numerous fixes you've attempted.

What other settings are available in your BIOS for the boot order? Perhaps it needs to be set on RAID or SATA rather than HDD. If that doesn't work, I'd try resetting the MB BIOS settings to their factory defaults and starting there.

Thanks for tryin guys.. Im sure I'll figure it out sooner or later and if I do I'll post it