Loading windows on formatted hard drive

Double C

Hi

I have an old pc that my sister wants to start using but the problem is the HD that was in it has been formatted and now I cant get Windows to boot off the CD. Its saying the BOOTMGR in missing. Ive tried tinkering about with the boot settings but nothing seems to work. Any ideas?

IrishTonyO

sounds like it is trying to boot from the HD and not the CD drive, go into the bios and make sure the boot order has the cd drive in it.

Double C

IrishTonyO wrote: »

sounds like it is trying to boot from the HD and not the CD drive, go into the bios and make sure the boot order has the cd drive in it.

Yeah the CD is in the boot order alright. I got a message saying to boot off the cd press any key but straight away after it says the BOOTMGR is missing. I guess its just trial and error til it works!

IrishTonyO

you sure the cd is ok? try the cd in another computer to make sure its the correct one and has no damage on it

Double C

Yeah the disc is grand it works fine on this pc.

Is there any way of loading it onto the HD if I put the HD into this computer? Im running 7 on this pc and the disc is for XP pro.

monkeypants

You could do that, but every single driver would then probably be wrong and when the disk was returned to the original PC, drivers for that one would need to be loaded.

How many disks are in this older PC and how are they set up?

Double C

There is two HD's in the machine but both are formatted and completely blank. I tried putting one of the HD's into the other pc and the disc runs but it says it cant install XP because there is a newer version of windows already installed. Is there any way around this?

Double C

Sorry about digging this thread up again but I'm stuck! Ive set the boot order to the CD and I do get a brief "press any key to boot from cd" message but then the "BOOTMGR is missing" message comes up again. Ive googled it and gone through lots of different options but nothing works! Any ideas?

matt-dublin

Double C wrote: »

I got a message saying to boot off the cd press any key but

did u press the any key???

you know u need to press a key on the keyboard when this message shows right?

polyfusion

Check that the hard drives and CD drive are all showing up in the BIOS.

If the PC has a floppy drive, you could trying booting a Win98 boot disk with CD-ROM support and see if you can get it started from there. If you know how to google, you should be able to find a Win98 boot disk.

Dermot Illogical

Are you sure it's a bootable CD? Not all windows disks are. You may need to boot into dos using a floppy disc, navigate to the install executable and kick it off from there.

Double C

matt-dublin wrote: »

did u press the any key???

you know u need to press a key on the keyboard when this message shows right?

Wow, really??? :rolleyes: Nothing happens when I press the keys, the BOOTMGR message comes up about 2 seconds after.

Anyway, its set to boot off the CD in BIOS. I haven't got a floppy drive on this pc, I think a friend has a usb floppy drive, would that do?

matt-dublin

The reason why I said that is cos the bootmgr error sounds like an error you would get when trying to boot off a hard disk, wasn't trying to be overly cheeky :-)

you could try make a win 98 boot cd, the only problem about installing it that way would be that your c drive would need to be fat32 I think, can't remember though

tman

Kind of sounds like it isn't recognising the key presses
What kind of keyboard are you using?
Maybe try a PS2 one instead if you're using a USB one... (but then again, you wouldn't be able to get into the bios settings if that were the case)

polyfusion

Double C wrote: »

Anyway, its set to boot off the CD in BIOS. I haven't got a floppy drive on this pc, I think a friend has a usb floppy drive, would that do?

I'm not sure that would work, will depend on how old the PC is and if it can boot a USB device (I don't think you'd be booting a floppy drive, rather, booting a USB device).

I don't think the format of the hard drive would matter; when the boot disk is booted, the files for the environment are loaded into memory, not onto the hard drive. A boot disk should run even with an unformatted (or exotic) drive present.

Have you tried installing XP with just one hard drive connected?

matt-dublin

if its an older pc, the bios might not be using ps2 emulation for usb keyboards, that could esplain why its not recognizing the key press?

matt-dublin

on a second note, you could try reformatting both hard drives, when there's nothing there to boot the PC will be forced to boot into the CD. It sounds like its still trying to boot into something that hasn't been quite deleted properly.

I would suggest reformatting both hard drives, maybe get a utility cd for yout hard disks from the manufacturer website and do a low level format.

those disks definitly haven't been formatted properly.

Double C

Thanks for the replies lads!

I have tried installing XP with one HD in, still the same message.

The keyboard is USB but I can get into the BIOS and all so I dont know why it wouldnt work when the press any key message appears.

Im pretty sure the BIOS has something about booting off an external device, I havent got time now but I'll check later. I'll try re formatting the disks later too.

dun79

Hi Double C

you should download ultimatebootcd then burn to cd and run active@ killdisk from the hard drive tools menu.
killdisk will wipe your hdd,
then try boot your windows cd again.

matt-dublin

can you try a PS2 keyboard?

also try using the other hard drive if you haven't tried that

Dermot Illogical

If it's not a bootable CD no amount of BIOS or keyboard changes is going to make it boot, so it's worth double-checking. Try it in another machine if possible. The BOOTMGR message is Vista/Win7 only, so it's possible that the PC is trying the CD, finding no bootable disc there, and moving back to the HDD.

If memory serves me correctly, Windows upgrade CDs are generally not bootable. They need to be kicked off while the OS is running.

Double C

Ok Im doing the killdisk thing now, its gonna take all night from the looks of things, the disk is 156gb. Ill post tomorrow with the results. Cheers for the help!

Are you trying to boot into the CD then install throught that?
or
Are you trying just to install the OS to the HDD?

Note:
Fe*k Windows, install http://ubuntu.com/download/ .

Double C

That Killdisk thing worked perfectly, I ran the boot cd and Windows is fully installed now. Thanks for all the help lads!