An Rookie can't install Win2K on new killer system he built himself

[gotigers]

I just built an really nice system with a little help from a friend who had done it before but now we are stuck trying to get Win2K (I believe it is the ME ed.) loaded. Here's a list of the hardware followed by a description of what I've attempted to do:
MB: ASUS ATX 815E
HD: 40G WestDig ATA/100 IDE 7200RPM
DVD-Rom: Toshiba 16X DVD 48X CD-R INT EIDE (is the fact that it's an EIDE a problem?)
Floppy:
Mem: Kingston Vauleram 256MB
CD-W: HP 9700 16X10X40 INT IDE
CPU: PIII 1GHZ, 256K,133FSB

Boot up the first time went flawlessly. The BIOS recognized everything. HD partition and format was cake but I think I screwed up by putting a boot disk from Win95 in (my work laptop was the only thing I had to create a statup disk). Now I get to the C: prompt and attempt to 'cd d:' (and 'e' and every other letter) I get 'invalid drive spec'. I am so close and yet so far....please help. Do I need a start-up disk from Win2K? It seems like the problem is that DOS can't see the CD-ROM. This is driving me nuts because BIOS 'saw' it and it's listed on the DOS screen at startup. I've also tried setting it (the CD-ROM) to the primary boot device with no avail. Am I hosed because it's EIDE?
Thank you in advance for your time.

gotigers

 

[obenton]

You simply have to install the cdrom IDE drivers from the floppy. The win95 floppy doesn't have them - the win98 floppy does. Lots of bootdisks for download at bootdisk.com .

 

[ddiccico]

you can boot from the 2k install cd

 

[konichiwa]

The actual 2k CD should be bootable unless you have the MSDN edition.

 

[bozo1]

<< The actual 2k CD should be bootable unless you have the MSDN edition. >>



Hmm, my MSDN W2K Cd's are bootable...

 

[konichiwa]

I have an MSDN cd that's Win2000 pro, srv and advsrv all on one CD and it's not bootable. Yours may be something different -- I'm not complaining though, it's amazing they can fit all of that on one CD.

 

[tasslex]

<< I have an MSDN cd that's Win2000 pro, srv and advsrv all on one CD and it's not bootable. Yours may be something different -- I'm not complaining though, it's amazing they can fit all of that on one CD. >>


I've been looking into making that CD bootable with easy selections at boot time... I've heard people ask about this so many times it's amazing, If I can do it I will post something, somewhere, fa sho!

 

[Psychoholic]

<< I just built an really nice system with a little help from a friend who had done it before but now we are stuck trying to get Win2K (I believe it is the ME ed.) loaded. >>



There's a ME edition of W2K??? Wow!!!
I think you mean Windows ME, correct????

Anyway as stated above you need to make sure you have CD-ROM drivers loaded or boot from the CD.

 

[gotigers]

Yeah, I'm new at this so I'm talking straight out of my keester at the moment. I need to run home to look at the disk to see what ver. I have. Per obenton's suggestion, I went to bootdisk.com and downloaded a handful of winxx.exe's. I'm assuming I can run these (well, one of these) straight from either drive (C: or A and the CD-ROM driver should let DOS see my D: drive? At which point the Win2K disk will start spinning and I'll be doing back-flips!

This was my first posting and Holy Toledo am I impressed with the stellar response. Thanks much all!
T

 

[Shadow07]

If you want to boot off of the CD, you need to make sure that the CD-ROM device is listed first in the boot order in your BIOS. If this is not set, and there is a boot loader in the boot sector of your HD, the CD will never boot. Just a heads up.

Also, if you need any information on creating a SP slipstreamed CD, PM/IM/email me.