Re: Installing XP Pro on Hard Drive

"Twayne" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:#mfpNxrPKHA.1512
@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl:

"Boris" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Xns9C91BCA22D3B5nospamnospaminvalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,

I'm updating the OS on an old P4, 1.6MHZ. It's currently running
Windows 2000 Pro, but I want to install a retail version of Windows
XP Pro on it. The problem is that I can't get the machine to boot
from CD. All attempts have failed over the last two evenings.

I've installed a barely used 160GB Western Digital hard drive as the
master, and set to boot from a Windows 98SE startup floppy. The
floppy creates a ramdrive D, and I can then log to the CD-ROM, and if
the Windows XP CD is in it, I can read all the files just fine.

From the floppy I need to fdisk, but there's where my memory fails me.
It's been a long time since I've had to use DOS to partition a hard
drive. I can't remember if once I creat a primary DOS partition (just
one large partition) do I need to set it active? If so, do I reboot
first, and then set active, or set active before a reboot? Also, do
I then need to format, or should I log on to the Windows XP CD, and
run winnt from the i386 folder?

I have gotten the message that smartdrv.exe is not on my system.
Where can I find this file, and where should I copy it to, before
attempting setting up Windows?

Many thanks.

You have to actually boot from the XP CD to do what you want. To do
that, you might have to go into your BIOS CMOS System settings
(whichever it's called<g>) and set the CD to be the first boot device
with your hard drive as the second boot drive.
That way it'll look for the CD to boot from first and if there is no
CD in the drive of if it's not bootable, it'll just boot 2000.
When it's working right, during a boot you'll get a prompt like
"Press any key to boot from the CD" and a countdown will start, which
will put you back into 2000 if you don't press a key before it reaches
zero.

It's a very round about way to do it using a boot floppy.

HTH,

Twayne`

Hi,

Yes, I'm aware that the way to do this is to boot from the XP CD. I've
done it many times doing clean installs on other machines. I am familiar
with making changes, etc. within a BIOS, I do it all the time. The
problem is that this particular machine will not boot from CD. The BIOS
allows me to set it to boot from CD, and I've done that, but it simply
will not.

The original set up was a Win2000 Pro, SP1:

A: NEC floppy
C: Western Digital 80GB, Win2000, primary IDE channel, jumpered single
D: NEC CD-ROM, secondary IDE, jumpered master
E: Plextor DVD/R, secondary IDE, jumpered slave

The CD-ROM would always read data cds, but about 90% of the time would
not read audio cds. If an audio cd were placed in D, it would not auto
start Windows Media Player, even though set to do so. If I navigated to
D with Windows Explorer, it said please insert a disk in drive D.

The DVD/R would never read either data or audio cds.

By the way, the BIOS recognizes both optical drives, and even in Device
Manager, the optical drives are recognized, and 'working properly'.
System Information (Accessories) also reports the optical drives
properly. I did uninstall and reinstall the generic Windows drivers (and
secondary IDE controller) for these optical drives, but no luck fixing
the problems.

I decided to install Windows XP Pro on to a larger, Western Digital 160GB
hard drive that I had on the shelf from a few years ago, and see if the
optical drives would work under XP. My suspicion was that even though my
son had installed Win2000 from CD years ago, that the optical drives must
have worked then, and it must have booted from CD then, but because he
loved to experiment with OSs and dual booting Linux/Win2000, and video
and sound cards...blah blah blah, that I needed to start from scratch.
With the machine configured as above, I connected this drive to the
primary IDE channnel, jumpered slave, and re-jumpered the Win2000 drive
from single to master.

I started the machine, and Win2000 came up as usual, identifying the
slave hard drive as F. I put the XP cd in D, but no auto start. I
navigated to cd, and clicked off Setup, and XP setup began. It would not
allow me to install XP on/over Win2000 already on C, but did allow me to
do and Advanced Install, which I did on F. All went fine, and when done,
I had a dual boot system with Win2000 on C, and WinXP on F. When I
started the machine, I was presented with the dual boot loader screen,
and I could choose either OS. If I chose XP, guess what, my optical
drives worked fine, and even auto started audio cds. If I chose Win2000,
I was stuck with the problems described above.

I really didn't want a dual boot system. I prefer a single boot system
with XP. so I started to try to install XP on the new hard drive. But,
because the machine won't boot from CD, even when set to do so in the
BIOS, I've had to use a Win98SE startup floppy to install a ramdrive,
which allows me to read the CD-ROM.

If you've read this far, thanks.
.