Re: Format hard drive with XP upgrade won't work because of "newer


Thank you! I was wondering about the USB keyboard! We noted when we tried
booting from the XP floppies that they keyboard commands weren't taking. (My
younger son was helping at this time.) He actually got all the 6 disks
through by carefully timing the changing of disks by the light on the floppy
drive. It was amazing to watch. However, when he got to the final disk ( I
knew this would happen), you have to give it a command from the keyboard and,
of course, they keyboard wouldn't give the command.

We've actually looked around the house for a non-USB keyboard. We haven't
found one yet, but maybe our neighbors might have one we could borrow. (Now,
why, oh why, did we get rid of all those keyboards lying around?)

Thank you for confirming my suspicion about the USB keyboard and explaining
why it isn't working!
"VanguardLH" wrote:

Grace wrote:

Sorry, VanguardLH...
I was replying to LV Travel. I apologize.

In response to your advice, I can't even get to the correct setup area as
far as I can tell.

Even when i boot from the XP Upgrade CD...I still get what looks like the
entire program booting up. (I.e. I still get the blue screen with me and
all my kids icons to select from.) This doesn't seem right to me, but it
does sound like my computer is booting from the cd when I "press any key to
boot from cd."

If Windows is loading (and what you mean by the "full program") then you
did not boot from the CD. Either you pressed a key too late when
prompted after the POST screen, you are using a USB keyboard on a legacy
host (so the USB keyboard is not yet recognized), or your BIOS is not
configured to boot from the CD device *before* the hard disk device.

If you are using a USB keyboard, it requires that you also use a host
whose BIOS supports legacy USB devices (i.e., USB keyboard and USB
mouse). If it doesn't, that USB device will not be recognized until the
USB drivers are loaded by the OS. If the OS has loaded to load the USB
driver(s) then it is too late to run anything from the install CD. Plug
the keyboard into the PS/2 port for the keyboard (you may need to use a
USB-to-PS2 adapter on the keyboard or get a PS/2 keyboard). Or boot
into the BIOS and configure its BIOS to support legacy USB devices (but
then the USB keyboard is dead so you can't even do the setup in BIOS and
will still have to connect the keyboard to the PS/2 port).

Because you saw the "press a key to boot from CD" message, it is likely
that the BIOS is configured to boot from the CD drive (and hopefully it
is configured so the CD/DVD device is listed before the hard disk device
in the boot device sequence order in the BIOS). However, because it
continue onto loading Windows even after you have hit a key make me
think you are using a USB keyboard but your BIOS does not support legacy
USB devices or hasn't been enabled to support them. You can hit the
keys on your USB keyboard all you want but none of those keypresses will
be recognized until the USB drivers are loaded by the OS and that is
after the OS has already loaded.

.