HD problems

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Hello again all, just thought id help a friend out whos taken it up on himself to try and put XP on his machine, and im having a headache trying to sort it out. Basically i cant get into the computer bios at all , as the computer just wants to carry on with the installation , but keeps taking me round in cirlcles.

So what ive done ive put his hd in my com on slave and if i wanted to i could just wipe his HD and start again, is this wise as i dont want to do any damage to it . Hes changing from ME to XP. If a format it from here will i be able to put the software cd in from start and then go from there or is it a bit more technical than that. As always any help would be very much appreciated

 

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Hi,

It sounds like you have started the install and something has gone wrong, which is why you want to go into the BIOS to change the boot order?

For best results it is always better for a fresh install as opposed to an upgrade especially when you are talking about ME!
It sounds as if you are pressing the delete or F key too late and that is why it is carrying on with the install.
Re-start the PC and bounce the required key to enter the BIOS. You can then tell it to boot from the CD Rom. If i were you I would select Cd rom as first and then the required drive as second.

Edit
If you use your PC to install his XP then it will install everything for your hardware. When you swop drives back to his it will require a few re-starts as it finds drivers for his hardware.
Let us know how you get on.

 

Why do you need to get into the computers BIOS?

Does the installation keep crashing at the same point?

Have you ran the option to check compatibility on the CD?

What I would probably do (given that I don't know all of the circumstances) is to put the disk into your PC, removing yours first. Install a clean XP (wipe his ME) on your computer, then put the HD back into his computer and boot from the XP CD and do a restore over the top of its self.

 

I am sure you can kick the installation off in windows and just select a new installation that replaces the existing windows install. All necessary files will be copied to the hard drive, it will re-boot and take you into the setup program where you can format, partition etc.

Pete

 

From previous experience if you start the installation in windows it doesn't always let you format the disk, even if specify a clean install.

 

Well, when I said I am sure you.... I really meant I *thought*...

 

Well i maaged to put Xp oin the drive but only from my computer (see top), and i tried to put his origianl hd back into his computer and go from there. The problem is now even tho it recognises that there is XP on the drive i cant get into the boot up sequence at all, Ive tried all the keys , ie esc, f2, f8 and f but no luck.

Now i can get into a mode that gives me the option ofe safe mode and command prompt etc but then it just crashes. I can even get the f8 hey tho take me into a set of options called debug mode and vga mode , but really i think i need bios to do a whole format? One more thing if it is any use ,my mate was complaining that he couldnt always get a good response from his com , sometimes it woulndt start upat all as if there was power failure, but now i think im just clutching at straws.

I also know that his cd drive is set to boot up first , should i remove this and then try to get into bios as it could be conflicting ? I getting stuck and frustrated but i spose its great experience, thank you all again for you help , more help is sorely needed tho

 

What it sounds like is that when you have installed XP on your PC it has installed all of your hardware and devices, and created a HAL.

What its sounds like you now need to do is to place the drive back into his pc ( as you have already done) put the XP CD into his cd drive and boot from CD.

When the CD boots up you want to install windows XP, the installer should then detect that there is an installation of XP already on the drive and offer you the option to repair it.

Select the repair option, and windows will run through setup.

HTH.

 

Have you ever actually managed to get into the BIOS?

It should say right at the start which key to press.
If you are pressing the right key then it might be set to not not give you the chance to get in.

If so you will have reset the BIOS by either removing the motherboard battery for a couple of mins or using the jumper to short it.

If it boots to the cd as you said it is. You should get the xp setup screen. If so, then go ahead and do a repair.

Whats happening is when you loaded xp on your friends HDD from your own computer, it loaded all the device drivers also. Which is why it wont boot from your friends computer now. So what you need to do now is get into the windows xp setup by booting up from the cd and do a repair install which will fix things.

 

I have tried moving a hard drive with an operating system to another machine before. I would not recommend this as a proper way to install a new clean stable OS. As has been mentioned already, when Windows installs for the first time it takes things slowly one step at a time, configuring hardware and recognising all the various devices that will later show up in Device Manager. The HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) hal.dll is also unique to a machine.

So when you remove this configured drive and put it in another machine i.e. his one, you are expecting the plug and play enumerator to be able to pick up all the pieces and sort itself out. Well you might get lucky, I did the first time but the chances are you will end up with a worse installation i.e. less stable than if you just upgraded ME.

Why not just copy the i386 folder to his HDD. move his HDD back into his machine. Boot from a floppy, CD to i386 and run the 16 bit installer from there?

Pete

 

Well all, thank you for the advice. Neal, that tip on reseting tyhe bios by taking out the battery was the creme d la creme, it worked a treat, i managed to do the boot up cd trick from there. Ive also sussed my ,ate needs a new cd drive as his is fkd, ill put xp on and know that there is nothing wrong with the disc ie clean , no scratches but when im installing it misses some files and asks me to press esc to skip them even though they are not the same files when i try another install

Ill have a bash again tomorrow, but hopefully will have it all worked out, then i think ill have a go at overclocking thank you all for your help again