[philthomas]

Let's go back a few steps, to when Vista Ultimate was installed and working ok.

What hardware and software was installed, initially, when it was working ok ?

What did you add (Hardware or software) between then and when it first failed to recognise your Lite-on shm-165p6s02c ?

It might be your best bet to remove all partitions from your HDD and start afresh ..... i.e. booting with the Vista DVD and letting it partition and format the drive and do a fresh installation.
In view of all the tweaking you have done, it might also be a good idea to reset the bios default settings, before you begin.

There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason from what you have reported, so you need to do something drastic like this IMO, if you are to have any chance of sorting things out.

Also, dont be tempted to try umpteen things (stabbing in the dark) if something doesn't go to plan.
Report back here first .... there are enough experts here to help

Good Luck with it

...... oh btw, I have to ask ..... is this a genuine copy of Vista ?

[johnboy1998]

hi thanks for all the help when vista was installed i had nero 8.1 and poweriso insalled thats all in regards to dvd/cd software.

at first vista and nero where burning dvd etc fine but then it stopped reading the discs it had burned but they had worked previously i have always just used my dvd writer so the cd-rw drive only came into play until the problem with the dvd

the vista dvd wont boot from the dvd drive either

also when i updated vista ultimate with windows update it didnt show sp1 i downloaded it manually and that was round about the time the drive stopped and xp wouldnt boot onto my hard drive when vista was installed so used another program to format sure its called killdisc or something.

p.s my vista is an oem version

thanks again

[johnboy1998]

hi phil

unfortunately my vista is not genuine its an oem version

thanks

[philthomas]

OK .... assuming you wish to install Vista and not XP, let's first look at why the Vista disk wont boot.
Have you checked the boot drive sequence, in bios, to make sure the CD/DVD drive is the first boot device ?

[philthomas]

Originally Posted by johnboy1998 hi phil unfortunately my vista is not genuine its an oem version thanks

OEM means it was supplied by the Original Equipment Manufacturer for your PC. If this is the case, then it's genuine.

If it was downloaded or copied, however, then it isn't

[johnboy1998]

yes i have tried this but still nothing happens the cdrom drive works to boot xp but as i said crashes with a cd within xp the cdrw never works from boot or the dvd drive

thanks

[johnboy1998]

yes phil downloaded it is preactivated

thanks

[philthomas]

Originally Posted by johnboy1998 yes phil downloaded it is preactivated thanks

Well that's probably why you have problems then.
Lots of the stuff on torrents etc. contains malware/spyware etc. and has been tampered with and cracked, by removing various system files.

To be honest ..... dont waste your time with them, unless you want the type of headaches you're getting.
Not only that, they are illegal and it's against forum rules to discuss in any way.

If you have a genuine copy of XP, we can try to help you install this, if you wish.

[johnboy1998]

hi phil yes i agree with you to be honest just wanted to see what difference directx10 would make not worth the money i think my xp is genuine though got the key and everything.

so do you think a fresh install of xp would work but it wont boot from the dvd drive would just have to use the cdrom drive and hope it doesnt play up

thanks

[philthomas]

Unless the DVD Drive is faulty, there's no reason why it shouldn't boot from the XP CD, as all XP Installation disks are bootable.
It should just be a case of inserting the disk and restarting the PC, assuming your boot sequence in bios is set correctly.

Then use the XP installation wizard to overwrite the Vista partition and do a format and clean install