[yvonnet]

Hello,

Hoping someone can help with my dim-witted questions.

I have a four year old PC (OS Windows XP) which is slightly cranky. It's still very fast but has all sorts of little glitches that I think could be sorted out by taking it back to factory condition. Ditto my laptop.

I decided to sort the laptop out first in case of problems and guess what - am now in a complete pickle!

I performed a complete new install of Windows XP on the laptop using a proper disk which came with SP2 loaded. All went OK but I didn't understand about partitioning so have ended up with the OS loaded on the laptop four seperate times (had been previously done twice by friends). Found a tutorial on the web which explained about them, and how to do an install after deleting them and realised that's what I should have done as the OS now takes up 34% of my hard drive.

So.......seemed sensible to try again, delete partitions and then do a clean install. But, my Windows XP disc now won't work in the laptop. Just will not recognise it. The drive is fine as other disks are recognised, the disk is fine as it is recognised by my PC, but it just will no longer work in the laptop.

Please, can anyone help with any suggestions as I'm getting quite frustrated.

Secondly, am now very wary about doing anything to my PC although it really does need to be taken back to factory condition. This is probably a really silly question but is there any reason why I shouldn't use the "Format" option on my C drive (after backing everything up of course)? Seems like it should achieve what I need, but after the laptop experience am frightened to mess that up as well!

Thanks for any help
Yvonne

[Wolfeymole]

Hello Yvonnet

Welcome to TCF

It sounds to me like you pressed "Press any key to boot from cd" more than just once when installing XP.
This is not your fault and it's not really explained by Microsoft that you shouldn't do it or you will end up with a load of partitions.
Can you post a pic of your start up options like the one below?

[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

This info is located by right clicking My Computer/ Advanced/ Startup and Recovery then click the Settings tab then click the Edit tab.
This will bring up what I have put in a Notepad file, copy this and paste it back here.
Yours will obviously differ from mine, don't worry about that.

[yvonnet]

Thank you for the welcome, and the prompt reply. Obviously a bunch of nice people here, maybe I can contribute some day instead of asking silly questions.....

Thanks also for the explicit instructions, they were very helpful in coming up with this:

boot loader
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
operating systems
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.1="Mic rosoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Mic rosoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

Yvonne

[Wolfeymole]

There are no such things as silly questions Yvonnet

Now
Delete these lines below in Notepad and Save

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.1="Mic rosoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Mic rosoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect


Also change the timeout=30 to timeout=1

Reboot and that should solve the problem.

[yvonnet]

Sadly, problem still there.

Did as suggested but disk still not recognised. Tried rebooting with disk in drive, and also tried inserting disk after computer up and running but no joy.

Good job it's too early for a drink!

[Wolfeymole]

Go into the bios and make sure you are booting from the hard drive not the cdrom.
Do you know how to do this?

[yvonnet]

Think I'd be better with some instructions - less chance of me causing even more havoc.

I really appreciate all the help and time you are giving me

Yvonne

[Wolfeymole]

Ok
Take the XP disk out of the cdrom.

Reboot and look when the black screen comes up for the message;
"Press F2 (example) to enter Setup"
This will take you into the bios
Have a look at this screen and change the the first boot sequence to the hard drive or in other words IDE 0
Make sure you save your setting when exiting.

[yvonnet]

Thanks for that great explanation - my screen looks different to yours, but the sequence is set as:

1st Hard Disk
2nd CD-ROM
3rd Floppy Disk

so haven't touched anything and left it as it is. Is that correct?

Yvonne

[hAvAAck]

cd rom needs to be first in order to boot from the xp cd