WinXP won't install for love nor money! He'p! (FIXED)

[DefRef]

I want to give my #3 rig to my g/f to replace the P2-333 she's limping along with. Here's what's in it:

Abit BH6
P3-700
384MB RAM
Acer 52X CD-ROM
6.4 GM Quantum HD
GeForce DDR
A3D Vortex 2 audio
Misc. other stuff

I had Win98SE on the HD and popped in the WinXP Pro CD. Setup started and wanted to do the Upgrade. I didn't want to do the upgrade, so I rebooted to a command prompt and whacked the partition thru FDISK...

...then the problems started.

For some reason, I can't get the f*cking PC to boot from the CD! I've set it in the BIOS and no matter what, it will not boot from the CD. I tried booting from a Win98 boot disk and running the winnt.exe from the i386 folder, but when I tried that, I get this error:

Internal setup error has occured.

Could not find a place for a swap file.

Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.

I have a set of XP boot disks (all SIX of them) and the first disk loads fine, but when it gets into the 2nd disk, the floppy drive chatters and it gives this error:

File \ntkrnlmp.exe could not be loaded.

The error code is 7.

Setup cannot continue.

I've made TWO sets of boot disks with different media and I hit the same damn error!

I'm stumped. What am I missing here?

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide.

 

[Saltin]

<< so I rebooted to a command prompt and whacked the partition thru FDISK >>



I cannot comment on why you are not able to boot from the CD to do the install, but I can tell you that winnt.exe from the command line of a WIN98 boot disk will not work untill you format that hard drive of yours.

 

[DefRef]

I redefined the Primary DOS partition, but couldn't format it. I suspected that lack of a format may be the problem, so what's the workaround?

 

[wlee]

First, you might want to do a full NUKE of the HD. I would recommend you use this debug routine.

Boot from a clean DOS boot floppy, then type in "debug" at the prompt. Next type in this script EXACTLY as it is shown. You can get a disk image from www.bootdisk.com if you don't have one.
You should also make a set of WinXP Boot Floppy. Here's the info from MS.

WinXP Pro Boot Disks

WinXP Home Edition Boot Disks



Hard Drive - DEBUG Script


A:\>DEBUG
-f 200 L200 0
-a 100
xxxx:0100 mov ax,301 ( ignore segmentffset values at left )
xxxx:0103 mov bx,200
xxxx:0106 mov cx,1
xxxx:0109 mov dx,0080
xxxx:010C int 13
xxxx:010E int 3
xxxx:010F ( Press ENTER an extra time here )
-d 100 LF
xxxx:0100 B8 01 03 BB 00 02 B9 01-00 BA 80 00 CD 13 CC
( make sure that hex values match above line before proceeding )
( if values do NOT match, type "Q" and start over )
-g=100
( ignore register display )
-q ( quits back to DOS prompt )

 

[DefRef]

I was talking to someone about this problem and my inability to format the HD. He asked if I had any utilities that could do it and I was about to say no when I remember...DUH!!!...that I have Partition Magic rescue disks and I can format the friggin' HD with that! D'OH!!!

If I format the HD, should I be able to install with the winnt.exe?

 

[cyclones]

Had the same problem.
Had a partition set aside for the XP pro to check it out.
Went through all the install and converted the partition to NTFS.
At finish the system was short of 40 files and a nice new "Blue Screen of Death" was the only thing showing.
It did give some help though....it said.....yes its true....."Run CHKDSK". Is this some sado joke ?
Using Partition Magic 7 I have managed to save my old system and converted the NTFS partition back
to FAT32 and reclaimed it as usable hdd.
Think I will stick with 98SE for a while yet.

 

[DefRef]

Formated the HD and partitioned it in NTFS with PM7 floppies, but when I tried to run the install, I get the same errors. Now what?

 

[DefRef]

Finally got it to work. A friend smoked the partitions with a Maxtor MaxBlast floppy and as soon as it was FAT32, it loaded w/o a hitch. A friggin' lame is that? Thanks to Corn for the assist. (Now fix the other one!)