Error Loading OS

[tail451]

I put my new XP disk in and fire it up. It goes through the setup process and says I have 15 seconds until it reboots and the setup process will continue. The problem is it doesn't continue. During the booting sequence it asks me to hit any key to boot from CD so I wait 5 seconds and a message appears next to it saying, "ERROR LOADING OS". I've tried several times to install it but the same thing keeps happening. So I pop over to my other rig, go through the setup and it works fine. Any help?

 

[Vashypooh]

Your HD is messed up. I had this before. What I did to correct was Scandisk, then I used Western Digital stuff to do the full Write 0's tool. Wrote 0's to everything, then when i installed it went ok. Try that

 

[tail451]

How do you do that with no OS

 

[Vashypooh]

How do you post on these forums with no pc?

 

[cker]

Check out the hard drive manufacturer's site from another PC. You should be able to download a utility that will build boot diskettes for you. Check the docs for how to initialize the disk drive (maybe called 'low level format')

 

[tail451]

I just hooked it up to this rig and ran Scandisk on it. I'll see if it worked in a few minutes.

 

[tail451]

Nope, same problem. Anything else I can try?

 

[Smilin]

If I remember right that's a bios generated error, not MBR or Bootsector.

Check your bios version, clear bios settings and then reselect your boot device (then double check it!).

 

[Vashypooh]

when my HD did this, I had to write 0's to the entire disc then it corrected the issue completely. Scandisc and such did nothing, but once i wrote 0's the disc was fine for useage.