WIN-XP Home new machine install (XP Home)

[Stan Denman]

I have a new MOBO and harddrive and DVD-ROM, and I cannot get XP home edition installed. Loading from the DVD-ROM, it will partition and format my harddrive, but when it reboots, I get the words "strike any key to load from CD..." When I do so I get an error message about being unable to boot from the CD. Any ideas?

Stan Denman
standenman@hotmail.com

[DaveA]

Sounds like there are NO drivers for your DVD. You may need to use a Windows 98 boot disk with CD support and see that will help. You may also need to add the drivers of your DVD to the boot disk, if the DVD can not use the generic drivers.

[Stan Denman]

Dave-
Thanks for your reply. If I have no DVD driver, how could it have read from the DVD so as to partition and format? I do not have a boot disk since I am booting from the XP CD.

[DaveA]

One other thing, you MUST hit the the "any" key within one (1) minute or else it will not boot to the CD. So reboot your machine and make sure that you give it permission as soon as you see the message. <img src=/S/evilgrin.gif border=0 alt=evilgrin width=15 height=15>

[WyllyWylly]

Just a bit further along the same principle...

If you have a large hard drive (and most are these days), my preference has always been to boot to DOS with the Win98 floppy, and then to copy the i386 directory to the hard drive. From there, I install NT/2000/XP (performing similar steps for Win9x). I've found that having the files there on the hard drive makes life much smoother throughout the "life of the OS."

If you plan to do this, make sure you find a copy of SMARTDRV.EXE and load it with your boot floppy. If you don't, copying the files will literally take HOURS!.

[DaveA]

I agree with Mark about the copying of the files to the hard drive. I just let the set do the copying, during the set up, one is asked about copy the files to your hard drive, just select yes.

I have been doing this since Windows 98 and save having to dig out the cd when needed. I have have found no advantage to precopying the file to the HD and then getting smartdrv.exe to run. The copying from the setup takes about 5 minutes. Even during all of the beta rebuilds that I have done, I do not see any advantage.

[WyllyWylly]

I should have clarified why I stated the need for SMARTDRV and pre-copying: I tend to start with a completely clean hard drive. The command line/DOS process is useful when you have a clean hard drive an no existing installation of Windows.

All Windows setup programs will create a temporary copy of the setup files on the hard drive and then delete them when they are done. When you run setup from within Windows you can specify that the files are copied to the hard drive, but I thought with 2000/XP these too were deleted at the completion of setup. It's infinitely faster to copy the setup files using Explorer as opposed to DOS. SMARTDRV expedites that process but it is still slower than doing it with the GUI.