System boots from CD only

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lance Schultz
  • Start date Start date
L

Lance Schultz

I installed XP on a newly assembled system. Will not boot
from the hard drive. I have to have the XP CD in the CD
drive in order to boot. Changed BIOS to boot from HDD to
no avail. It behaves as if there are no system files on
the hard drive to boot from. The drive was formatted
using Western Digital utility.
Any ideas?

Thanks
 
Yes, start over and format during XP setup as follows:
Assuming your system is set to boot from the CD-ROM drive, boot with the XP
CD in the drive. If it isn't or you are not sure, you need to enter the
system's BIOS. When you boot the system, the first screen usually has
instructions that if you wish to enter setup press a specific key, when you
see that, do so. Then you will have to navigate to the boot sequence, if
the CD-ROM drive is not first line, set it first in the boot sequence. Save
your settings and exit with the XP CD in the drive. The system will reboot.

A few screens into the boot process, if you see the message on the boot
screen to "Press any key in order to boot from the CD," do so.

After loading drivers and files, you should be taken to a screen with
the following:

To Setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.
To Repair a Windows XP Installation using Recovery Console press R.
To Quit setup without installing Windows XP, press F3.

In your case, press ENTER.

Agree to the License agreement by pressing F8.

You will then be taken to a screen with two options.

To repair the selected Windows XP installation press R.
To continue installing a fresh copy of Windows XP without repairing,
press ESC.

This will bring you to a partition map where you
can delete, create and format partitions.
Select the drive you wish to format, delete the partition, then create a new
partition, format as desired and continue with XP installation.

NOTE: I don't know if using the Western Digital tool is the issue but I do
know, XP prefers you use its tools for such actions.
 
NOTE: I don't know if using the Western Digital tool is the issue but I do
know, XP prefers you use its tools for such actions.
Click to expand...

Seen this issue frequently crop up with WD tools, Maxblast, and the like
Michael. Something about the drive overlay software these drive setup
utilities use does not agree with the XP bootloader, so it ends up not being
installed and continues to prompt for the CD to boot. Even copied over and
running fixboot does not seem to resolve the issue. Probably due to the way
the DO installs itself and somehow is blocking further writing to this
sector, but I'm not 100% on that yet.

In any case, the only fix at this point is exactly what you have stated:
start over and recreate the target partition with the XP tools.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Windows
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone
 
Thanks, Rick. I've seen it as well but I hadn't considered the drive
overlay software, only the specific format tool. In other words, I saw it
as separate from the drive overlay software but I can certainly see how this
makes sense.
 
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