Installing XP on an empty drive that was formatted

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From: John Gardner (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 05/19/04 

Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 00:09:21 -0700

This computer crashed and lost the operating system and a
few other items. I have tried for about a week to install
XP (preferred) Failed, install Win 2000 failed, Win ME and
it also failed. I tried all the other windows, 3.1, win 95
and win 98. I even tried to install DOS 6.
The drive also will not boot up with any start-ups I have
or made recently. I did however find a place to make a set
of 6 floppys that would boot and install a partial set-up
of XP. But there is not a dos prompt to work with. And the
setup also wants, at the start-up, service pack 1. This is
the main pain in the *** because the PC doesn't recognize
this disc. I downloaded the SP1 on to a CD. All 125MB and
preceded to insert the CD into my CD drive. Well..you
guessed it! Nothing---The drive doesn't know that the disk
is there. I've studied up on this and learned that there
is a fix! All that has to be done is to create an "i386"
file and folder to replace that missing or corrupted file
in Windows.
Problem is: No command line (c:/) to work with if the
replacement is supposed to be on the hard drive or on the
XP disk. I really don't want to mess with the XP setup CD.

I am hoping that one of you may know what I can do to get
a system on this hard drive. Any system! Because once I
have an operating system on the drive then I can upgrade
that older system with up to date systems.
Thanx,
John

 

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