XP clean install? HELP!

[Str8UpKiller]

Well I have XP pro and in the readme it says in order to perform a clean install you can either have an os installed already (but this leaves you with an annoying "choose your os" prompt at restarts) or do boot directly to your cdrom drive. I tryed booting to my cdrom drive via changing bios boot sequence settings but I just recieve the message "invalid system disk" I don't know what one would do if they didn't already have an OS installed. I can't seem to make work from a formatted HD without first installing win98 THEN installing XP via setup.exe on the cd. It's annoying that they don't provide a 3.5 boot disk for XP. Any help you guys could offer is greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[M O M O]

format c:
...then under your bios settings, change the boot sequence to include your cdrom as the first boot device. then reboot, while having the boot cd"xp cd" already installed. After the initial boot screen, it should say press any key to boot from cdrom.

 

[rbV5]

formatting first is redundant actually, XP will partition/format your hardrive properly. Are you sure: your XP is a bootable CD? You saved your bios change(boot sequence) before rebooting?

 

[UberNeuman]

If the cd boot doesn't work then use a Win98 start-up disk and enable cd-rom support. Find the I386 folder on the CD and run Winnt.exe - it should install...

 

[stingray2]

i installed WinXp on several machines this weekend. I tried to install on one, using the a Win98 boot floppy, with CD support, but the setup.exe file on the WinXp disk would not work. This CD was bootable, but was freezing during 'testing of the system'. this was on a new 1.4ghz athlon Gateway. I would make sure your BIOS boot sequence had your CD before your Harddrive. and if your disk is good, bootable, it should work... but...but.. you have look for the BIOS approval message, that tells you to hit a key to boot from a CD rom. if you miss that message, and don't hit a key, it will not boot from a CD. and will go on with it boot process, to I assume your hard drive.
but be aware, on this gateway I was working on, they (gateway) have removed all the BIOS messages. you can't see them, you just have to know to hit the space bar during boot up, or something, what ever key it is for your BIOS.

good luck.. oh, and I never was able to install XP on that Gateway. I tried to install Win2k, but the install process failed, with a mesage that there was an issue with the harddrive. I never got around that problem, so WIn98 sits on that machine now. oh, the harddrive was newly formated from a Win98 boot disk, with FAT32 (20 gb segate, ATA100).