[help] My Computer Is Being Stubborn

With the recent joys that have occured (check this forum for the thread by me), I have decided to do two things. Poke out my eyes with a rusty spork, or reformat and reinstall Windows XP. And since I don't have a rusty spork, I chose to do the reformat. This is were I really get happy.

I went into the crappy excuse for a BIOS menu that Compaq gives you and set the boot order to:

CD

Floppy

Hard Drive

And guess what, it doesn't boot from the CD. So I went to M$.com and downloaded the 4.~ MB executable to create 6 boot disks for Windows XP. And guess what I get an I/O Error.

So my question: DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHAT THE **** IS GOING ON!!!

Thank you.

#161170

You need only one bootdisk. It can be easily done by rightclicking the floppydrive and choosing the bootdisk option. Then boot with that and run the setup from the cd.

This worked for me when i couldn't boot from my wxp cd.

Edit. Maybe i should be more specific. You need to format a floppy disk, the choose floppy drive format -option and there should be an option for a bootdisk. I don't have any disks so i can't say for sure.

Edit2. if there is a problem with your floppydrive, as Seph suggested, i can't help you

#161173

I know about those 6 floppies from MS, i used them last time...

However, the problem seems to bee with the floppy drive.. are you sure its properly connected (the cable inside). Also, check if you can read any other bootable disk or if you can read those disks on another comp...

#161177

Hmm Not sure that a set of faulty disks would give an IO error in this kind of case. More like Cannot Read from Drive A:\ would be more likely that you would see. I think this is actually down to loose cables or the drive itself is knackered.

#161194

OK, I did the Boot disk thing. Opened My Computer, Right Click on the Floppy drive -> Format and checked the "Create MS-DOS Startup Disk"

When I rebooted, I could only navagate in the A:\. When I tried to go to C: or D: (my CD-ROM) it said that it was unsupported.

I opened my case to check all the connections. There was one that was a lilttle loose so I pushed it in, but it seems to have no effect.

:cry: <- If I didn't have Transformers playing, I would definitly be crying.

#161196

OK, I have tried replacing the A: drive with another floppy drive (I know this one works with the other comp) but I am still getting the "Disk I/O Error" error. Plus when I pop in the MS-DOS startup disk, I cannot navigate outside the A: drive. It says Specified Drive Invalid, or something along those lines.

Please, someone has to know what the heck is going on. I spent the entire first half yesterday trying to find a solution. I just want to freaking clean instal. Just a clean instal... :cry:

#161806

If it says I/O Error it's most likely a problem with one of the boot floppies that you used to start setup. Try clean formatting those floppies and making new startup floppies or buy a new set of floppies and use them.

#161811

Yeah, I tried creating four different versions. 1st regular, 2nd different floppy, 3rd on other drive, 4th out of anger.

I'll see if my other computer likes the hard drive. Yeah, taking the computer apart once again!

#161827

here's a service that can help you with your computer problems

link

#161856

I would, but the other computer I am talking about, sucks even more than my current one. Here are the specs:

Main

PIII 500MHz

128MB 'o RAM

14GB HD

8x DVD-ROM

32x12x40x CD-RW

(cost = $29.~~, Thank you BestBuy Replacement policy)

Secondary

AMD Duron 450MHz

64MB 'o RAM

8GB HD

32x CD-ROM

(cost = $15 from Dad's Job)

Both running Windows XP Pro (OEM)

Send me a better one, I'll be happy to ask them for help.

#161860

When you created your DOS boot disk, did you include and configure the DOS drivers for your CD drive?

You won't be able to see it without them.

#161890

Have you tried just putting the CD in while windows is running then executing it? Are you having problems trying to reformat? It doesnt seem clear to me.

If you are having troubles your best bet is to restart in DOS mode and type reformat. Then install. If your drive isnt booting up right that might be a problem...

#161892

I only have one hard drive (one partition), if I try to do a clean install, it just installs XP over the existing partition. It doesn't get rid of all of the files, just replaces the files so you have a "new" install of Windows XP. I want a "clean" install. Where everything gets wiped. I tried to delete the partition and create a new one, but the instalation stores temporary files on the hard drive before installing it.

@ rj - No I didn't. But shouldn't it be able to read the c: drive?It is in NTFS. But still I can not access the C: drive.

I just assumed that Windows would make sure that it would have generic CD-ROM drivers. Well, I guess I assumed wrong.

Will a Windows 98 Bootup disk work also? I think I will give that a try. But the MS-DOS disk doesn't even let me go into my c: drive. I can only go into the a: drive.

#161923

take the harddisk from the damaged system and build it in another.

that'S the way I did 2 month before.

I copied my files and than format the damaged harddisk with partitionmagic. thats it.

D'you think that could help you?

#161948

Originally posted by wizard@May 14 2004, 02:34 PM

@ rj - No I didn't. But shouldn't it be able to read the c: drive?It is in NTFS. But still I can not access the C: drive.

I just assumed that Windows would make sure that it would have generic CD-ROM drivers. Well, I guess I assumed wrong.

Will a Windows 98 Bootup disk work also? I think I will give that a try. But the MS-DOS disk doesn't even let me go into my c: drive. I can only go into the a: drive.

DOS dos not understand the NTFS file format, so you will not be able to read it when booting from a DOS disk.

The only way to boot from a floppy and read an NTFS file system is with something like NTFS DOS Pro from Sysinternals.

It requires 3 or 4 floppy disks. Can't remember how many right now.

They have a free read-only mode version you can download.

Get it here.

BTW, how old is that Compaq you are using? It should be able to boot from an XP install CD.

Or is the CD a copy???

#161956

My main comp is '99- '00? Somewhere around there.

No, the CD is not a copy.

#161998

If you are using XP Pro, you really should be able to boot from CD and reformat the drive and then do a clean instal. I just did it last month. It's part of the regular boot-from-cd-install process.

#162002