Desperate for help, never have encountered this problem

[thefish8]

I can't install 98 or XP on my system. The error I get when I try and install 98 says "error loading user.exe" and it kicks out to DOS or it just kicks out to DOS anyways. With XP i get an saying setupdd.sys could not be loaded error code 7. I basically have no idea what to do.

I formatted my drive and ran fdisk. Someone suggested DELPART but thats for removing the primary so that didnt really work. I also tried the Data Lifeguard Tools but I still got the same error. I even tried the fdisk/mbr which didn't work either.

Please, please help me.

My System
AMD Athlon XP 1800
20 gig WD Hard Drive
the mobo is whatever I got at the XP givaway so its an MSI something
MSI geforce2 mx vid card

Thanks for anyone who helps.

 

[Dan]

You formatted your HDD after you ran fdisk, right?

 

[DaiShan]

how much and what type of RAM? sure it is compatible with that mobo (reaching here) also have you tried just booting with one stick of ram, or trying to determine if the RAM may be bad? How fast is that cd-rom too?

 

[thefish8]

Yes, I formatted my HDD after I fdisked.

I didn't check if the RAM was bad but I had the computer running with a dual boot of 98 and XP so I am pretty sure that it works. The ROM is like 48x I think (its the toshiba DVD ROM).

 

[optimistic]

I would try download the XP boot disks off the microsoft site. I dont know if I got the exact same error messages, but I was also having a problem installing an OS on my hdd that was working fine before I formatted it.

 

[optimistic]

http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;q310994&