[rongrace]

I'm hitting the correct keys but nothing is happening

[philthomas]

If you are using a USB keyboard, try with a PS2 one.

[rongrace]

Have managed to get into Bios and change boot sequence to look at CD drive first, but even though the windows cd is in the drive it ignores it and boots as normal

[philthomas]

That may mean one of a few things :

1. Your boot sequence is still wrong
2. Your Windows CD is faulty/damaged
3. Your CD Drive is faulty

Are you getting the "Press any key to boot from CD" message ? .... if not recheck your boot sequence and your Windows disk.

[rongrace]

The boot sequence is a s follows

1st CD/DVD-0:VOM-12E48X
2nd Disabled
3rd Floppy:1.44 MB 31/2
4th BBS-0(RAID):ST3200822AS
Try other boot devices : Yes

The CD drive is fine as I was using it yesterday
It could be the CD itself

[philthomas]

Did you get the "Press any key to boot from CD" message ?

Can you source another XP Installation disk ?

[rongrace]

No 'Boot from cd' message

I'll have to go hunting for another cd

Although I have managed to find a floppy disk that'll allow me to boot from it, iso I'm sitting at the c:\ prompt if that's any help

[rongrace]

Finally managed to get it to boot from the CD but as it's trying load windows I get the following error

STOP: C0000221 Unknown Hard Error
\SystemRoot\System32\ntdll.dll

[philthomas]

OK .... we need a bit more informaton than that .... when you say you managed to get it to boot from the CD, how far did you get with the Repair Install : http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XP...install.htm#RI tell us at exactly what stage you got the error.

[rongrace]

All I did was press any key to boot from the CD, then it went through it's routine of 'Setup is loading files' then goes on to 'Setup is loading windows' sits there for a minute or two then gives me the error message

[philthomas]

OK ... well in that case, it sounds as though it just cannot read the file ntdll.dll on the CD, or the file is corrupted.

As you had trouble booting with the CD, it could be that the CDis damaged/corrupted.

Try the same routine again and see if the same file causes the problem.

[rongrace]

Got my hands on another XP disk and booted from it, tried to follow the steps in the link, I selected the 'To set up windows now' option, but I don't get a choice of installation to repair, all I get 4 occurences of

Unknown Disk
(There is no disk in this drive)

Then bombs out to the blue screen of death with the following STOP error

0x0000008E (0xC0000005,0x8081C09C, 0xF7070798,0x00000000)

[philthomas]

Right ..... that error code suggests faulty RAM see here

If you have more than one stick of RAM, try removing all but one and see if the problem goes away, if not swap them around, still running with just one.

If only one stick, you will need to grab a replacement stick.

HTH