Problems installing Windows XP Pro

NullZer0

Hi everyone, I have a laptop that belongs to a friend and it is in very bad condition due to Viruses, Malware etc.

He bought Windows XP Pro Volume licence (its for work) which is a bootable CD.

I have placed the CD in the drive, waited for the computer to start and pressed escape to bring me to the menu where I can select to boot from "optical drive" , I selected optical drive (which I hope was the right selection) a few seconds later I am presented with the screen that he usually gets asking which partition to boot from.


I have tried everything but I can not get the laptop to boot from the CD!

Is there anything else that I could try?


By the way, if it helps, it's a Sony Vaio

aidan_walsh

Have you tried setting the CD drive as the default boot device in the BIOS, rather than hitting Delete? Why would he usually be asked what partition he wants to boot from?

NullZer0

Thanks for the reply.

I haven't a clue why he is usually asked that to be honest.... but he is... I don't know what he was doing with it.

I've tried that in the BIOS but I just can't find the option?

NullZer0

I've just set the default boot to optical drive and after a long pause I am back to the same screen asking me to "select the operating system to start"

There is a partition when you look in my computer... like two HD's so what if I was to delete the secondary one? If this would be any use how do I do it?

NullZer0

Can anyone help at all? this is pretty urgent.

jtiernan

Definetly do not delete that other partition as it may be a recovery partition. The dvd may be damaged that's seems why it is not booting especially when you have it selected in the BIOS. What modal is the laptop. Give the manufacturer tech line a call and they may to instruct you on how to boot the recovery partition then you could troubleshoot the dvd drive then

NullZer0

Hi,

The disk will boot on other computers though.
pcg-7a1m is the model no.

Boggles

Dvd drive or the cd could be damaged, laptop optical drives can be a little petulant when trying to boot from them.

One way around it, that sometimes works is to power off the machine with the cd drive open, turn it on and close the drive, this will force the cd to spin.

Hopefully that works, remember you have to press a key to boot from the cd, if it sounds like it is Accessing the cd, tap the space bar a few times.

NullZer0

Nope, no luck with that... You can hear it trying to access the CD alright and the light flashes.... but just back to that OS selection screen.

Oracle

It's a long shot but is there an option on the boot menu to boot from a USB device? You could copy the CD's files on to a USB stick using another computer (this could take a while) and then plug it in to the Vaio. Do you have access to an external CD device you could plug in? Try blowing gently on the laser lens in the CD drawer to clean it.

Capt'n Midnight

try another bootable cd to see if it boots from that.

IIRC the sony's got you to make image CD's rather than giving you media

have you found the boot menu in the BIOS and what options did it give you ?