boot disk failure

[substance12]

I'm doing a new install of xp but I can't get to that screen. I keep getting a boot disk failure. If i don't put in a cd then i get a BSOD, which is find because the hd needs to be reformatted.

so far I've tried 3 different cdroms, 2 different hdds, different IDE cables, different xp cds.

can someone help me?

 

[bendixG15]

Is the CD drive first on the boot order list ???

 

[substance12]

yes. i've also tried using a 98 floppy to try and load xp from dos but that failed too. I just tried using the 6 xp floppy disks but on disk 4 there was a corrupt file and so I gave up on that. When I was in dos I was able to browse through the cdrom. I think the problem lies in the fact that the mb doesn't want me to boot from the cdrom. the error is almost instant.

 

[unpolloloco]

What if u downoaded the hdd utility from the hdd manufacturer website (fdd version), booted off that, then reformatted hdd? Probably yer mobo however.

 

[moonsite]

If you boot from the 98 floppy, you can format the drive and copy the windows directory from the cd to the drive and run the installation from there.

 

[substance12]

98 will only let you format in FAT32. the drive doesn't need to be formatted either. what are the dos commands to copy the cd onto the hdd anyways?

 

[bendixG15]

best for u to go to bootdisk.com and get the info