problems instaling xp

[gmac]

Hi chaps
I have a dell laptop of which I can't change the boot sequence to boot from a cdrom, the BIOS is locked
So I booted from a floppy with cdrom support and continued that way.
No probs it goes through the motions loading files then right at the point at which it should go into boot windows setup menus, It freezes saying 'please wait while setup copies files to your hard drive'. well I have waited and nowt happens.
I have put i386 onto the drive.
The drive is FAT32 at the mo cos the boot disk is


Any suggestions????

Mac

 

[davie r]

Hi

The only thing i can think requires access to the bios ...........
if the bios virus protection is enabled then you will not
be able to install windows xp.

also if it is a new laptop - the hard-drive may have it's
own password etc - and may not allow you to change
the operatimg system

 

[hatab]

when u say u have put i386 onto hdd have u just 1 partition on hdd or 2 ?

if u have 1 partition only im sure ive read it will not work as its trying to install to itself.

when ive done this on a machine with no cd, ive made 2 partitions, the first large and formatted and made active. (hdd put in a desktop machine to do this)

the second small with i386 directory from cd on it.

then used boot floppy and run winnt from i386 directory

Have done this on dell lappy, what model do u have

 

[davidh]

Hi chaps
I have a dell laptop of which I can't change the boot sequence to boot from a cdrom, the BIOS is locked
So I booted from a floppy with cdrom support and continued that way.
No probs it goes through the motions loading files then right at the point at which it should go into boot windows setup menus, It freezes saying 'please wait while setup copies files to your hard drive'. well I have waited and nowt happens.
I have put i386 onto the drive.
The drive is FAT32 at the mo cos the boot disk is
Any suggestions????
Mac

have u tried using the xp floppys??

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...07-99f7-4a2d-983d-81c2137ff464&displaylang=en

 

[yashsmash]

I will agree with Hatab

You need to create partitions on ur disk using Fdisk, also another main thing is to have 6 bootable floppys and install them from link provided by Nutts. When you will boot ur pc using those xp bootable floppys then at the end it will ask if you want to convert FAT32 partitions into NAT (You shud do this), also at this point you can delete unwanted partitions if you know which one to delete.

 

[gmac]

Thanks for all the replies.
I have in the past been able to install from the i386 folder to the same drive,In fact when I did my nt course it was comon practice.
The hard drive does not have a password lock on it a good point though was virus protection is enabled so that may have been the problem.
But the bois having a configure password lock on it was the issue there.
The laptop in question was a dell latitude and not new.
Anyway after all that heres how I worked around the problem.
firstly I formated the hdd to Fat32,then I intsaled winme onto it after that I let winme start as normal then ran xp install from winme, during the install it was possible to select to convert the hdd to ntfs and carried on with the instalation and bobs yer uncle all done and dusted and shipped out.

I hope I havent chuntered on too much once again thanks for the replies.


Cheers :Cheers:

Mac

 

[cheecs]

to remove bios password, just open your pc and take the small round battery out and put it back in after 20 seconds and this shoud reset the password. but you will also loose settings e.g. system date.

Cheers

 

[gazzas]

It shouldnt matter if you only have one drive.
My lappy came with one partition and preinstalled.
When they preinstall all they do is copy the i386 folder onto the drive.
Look for a small hole in the laptop this is the reset button just press it and that should reset it.

 

[Shipoftheline]

I'd agree with davie most likely the bios virus protection. Try doing a search on the net for any information about the model number to see if they bios reset