XP Installation

[Stylez]

Hello everyone,

I am attempting to repair a firends computer and I believe I have made it worse? :) When I tried to delete (reformat) the hard drive to do a fresh install of XP I think I did something wrong and instead ended up with a second installation on the same drive, now the system will not boot up?

Anyone able to give me some direction

Stylez

[debbie]

Might be best if you explained in detail exactly what you've done so far. :)

[mander]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q255867

[Stylez]

A friend of mine was having trouble with her computer so I offered to try my hand at it having just recently re-installing XP onto my own computer without problems. Anyways I believe she had somehow gotten a copy of XP Proffessional which is what she was running on her system but giving her nothing but problems, perhaps a virus or something. ANyways I decided it would be best to wipe everything clean and start over so I tried to install a copy of XP Home onto her system, however at first it would not allow me to delete the current partition at first, unsure as to why? But then it started to go through the deletion and install process, or atleast I thought :) Not sure what I hit but dont think it was correct. Once the installation began, I noticed that the HD was already half full before it had barely installed anything so that is why I think nothing was deleted and it installed XP Home on the same drive? (Is this possible?) Anyways everything seemed to be working fine untl the installation was complete, then the system re-started, then the monitor wnet black and nothing has happened since? If I do a re-boot, the light on the monitor is green, then after a short while, it turns orange, almost like it has gone into a sleep mode or something?

Stylez

[mander]

Sounds like you have a couple of problems. If you need to format and try again, you can always download a 98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com

Boot with the floppy you make and run fdisk, deleting all partitions, the create a new partition. Reboot with the floppy still in there and at the command prompt type format /u to format the drive. Reboot and change the bios to boot from cd and follow the onscreen instructions.

Before doing all of this however, it sounds like the video card may be loose. With the power off, remove the video card and reseat it. Power up and do the format.

[Stylez]

I can use a 98 bootdisk even though it was XP that was on the system, that will still work, I was unaware, thanks I will give it a whirl

[mander]

Yes you can. Just be sure when you go to reinstall XP that you change the boot sequevce in the bios after formatting to boot from cd and you should be good to go.The cd will come back and format again to ntfs format I do believe.

[Stylez]

Okay, I have deleted the partition, now when I go to create a new partition, do I just create a Primary Dos partition?

[Bluvertigo]

Creating and Deleting Partitions
http://www.pctechbytes.com/fdisk.htm