Newbie having problem with clean install on laptop

[SeanT]

Hello,

I am selling my old laptop. I figured I would make the laptop as new as possible by using a prorgram that "scrubs" the harddrive. In hindsight I would have never done this, but too late now.

I think I am working with a clean slate. Whenever I turn on my pc it keeps repeating:

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082)
Copyright (c) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

For Realtek RTL8139(A/B/C)/RTL8130 PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.12 (010425)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.

Now, I made a boot floppy disk for windows xp home, and have my setup disks, but I cannot get setup to work. What happens is I get to the option to use the current paritioned space, or to delete it and start fresh. I deleted the old partioned space, and then created it again. I then chose to install windows using NTFS (not the quick setting). I have also tried the fat setting, but it did the same thing.

It then goes through the process of installing, but sends me right back to the screen asking me if I want to install or repair a previous install. It does not do anything. When I exit out I notice that I have a c:/windows section now that is slightly full of files.

What also should be mentioned is that I am getting this far using the windows setup cd that came with my new machine. The system recovery disk for the Sony laptop does not even get as far as I have. It stops aftering saying no fixed disks present[/b] "error x01"

Any help would be life-saving heh.

-Sean

 

[timswim78]

You may want to reset you BIOS to the fail-safe or default settings, and then give it another shot. Also, see if there is a BIOS update available.

 

[ColKurtz]

Questions:

1) Are you watching the install? After setup formats the partition and copies files, it restarts and boots the the hard drive where it continues setup. Normally you have to hit a key to boot the XP setup disc when it says "press any key to boot from CD". However, if your hard disk is not bootable (for whatever reason) I think XP Disc would boot without any interaction and thus you'd be back at the beginning of setup. Do you return to setup on reboot or when does it happen?

2) What is this "boot floppy disk for windows xp home"? There are setup floppies that can be made for XP, but no setup floppy (singular). Regardless, your XP CD should be bootable without a floppy.

3) Have you tried looking for and/or running setup.exe/install.exe in the files left on your C: (just for sh%ts and giggles)?

 

[SeanT]

Tim, I did reset my bios-didn't work


ColKurtz, yes, upon finishing, it reboots, but goes back to setup. This is likely because I have the cdrom ahead of the hardrive in boot order, but that is the default setting.

I made boot discs on floppies because it would not boot from cd at one point-now it does it from cds, but not floppy lol...AHHHH

Thanks for trying to help me through this.

 

[silverpig]

On the reboot take the cd out. It should boot from the hard drive and then ask you to put the cd back in.

Either that or change the boot order to be hard disk first.

 

[SeanT]

I fixed it! I was dumb. I thought in the boot section that the exclaimation points meant ENABLED..not disabled..lol...I had them all with exclamation points heh.