How to reinstall windows XP Home ?

Placebo

I changed boot to Optical drive but it still boots from harddrive
(in bios beside the harddrive there is a + beside it = meaning it has more info on it , optical drive doesnt (bios not detecting it ?) cd drive works in windows.
I have a recovery cd i think winxp home is on THAT.

background history:
Well my laptop kept freezing for every milli sec, like for instance whilst playing a song , id open mozilla and as soon as a website loaded it would stop(the song ? whole laptop ?), i gave it back to pc world to fix (at that time my cd drive wasnt working either) so all the did was 'replace' cd drive and did a 'unit test', the problem is still there !!!!! so im trying to reinstall windows.

Optikus

you need to change boot order to boot form cd first disable second, and thrid put in windows cd, restart and you should get the option press any key to boot from cd, press key and start installing windows.

Placebo

yeah i tried putting optical drive first then harddrive and then any removabe devices third, doesnt work.

The Muppet

You need to keep a close eye on the screen at boot up you should get the message to press any key to boot from cd when you OS cd is in the drive.

It should appear very early in the boot process before you see the xp load bar or logo.

Placebo

i dont see any such thing, im not an end user, ive done this on my pc, when you chance the boot to optical drive or so it boots from that or that prompt boot any key from cd does show up, but in this case nothing.

MrNuked

I had to do this a couple of times, in a very roundabout manner. I formatted the drive (almost everything had been copied to another drive). I gave it a FAT partition, and installed windows 98. Then I installed XP from Windows 98 (and put the drive back to being NTFS).
I used an old version of pqmagi to format it.

Placebo

thats crazy talk, im just gonna go smack this piece of crap in their faces, i demand a new laptop.

fudge this.

Optikus

try just setting the CD as first boot and disabling the rest.. you should then get the message Press any key to boot from CD... also im not to sure if you can do a reinstall from a recovery Cd, this could be the problem. really you need a full copy of windows.

Sherifu

Hi,
I've read your two threads on your troubles with the cd-drive booting.
One thing which may be the problem is the jumper setting on the cd-drive.
Is the cd-drive being picked up by the bios? can u see the model number for the cd-drive on the first screen at boot-up as primary master/slave or secondary master/slave? This is one thing which may be causing your strange booting problems.

RKM

Placebo

hey, you pin pointed the proble exactly, no its not being picked uo by bios (no serial/cd drive manufactures name)
any way to fix this ?

drive works fine in windows.

jessy

Check to make sure that all Cables are connected. Did you update the Bios lately?

Sherifu

It's strange if it works fine in windows, but i havent encountered this with optical drives, just hard drives. You could try to remove the drive and check the jumper setting is correct - should be some guide printed on the drive if its like pc drives - im not too sure for laptops. If ya set the jumper properly, as master or slave ya should be in business.

RKM

Placebo

i dont think i would be able to do that, not experienced in putting together laptops.

Sherifu

It's not actually too hard with laptops but if you don't feel up to it don't bother and bring it back to pc world.
Let them sort out their own mess
Best of luck.

RKM

Capt'n Midnight

check the notebook manual - some have an option to chose boot device - eg: F12 on toshiba's

some copied CD's wont boot
some CD's eg: XP you need to press a key during boot or it will transfer to the HDD