Help with new install from CD

mewso

I've just put together a new machine, Abit NV7-S, Athlon 2600, New Western Digital SE 80Gig as primary master, my old maxtor 40gig as slave and a Ricoh Cd-RW/DVD as secondary master, Pioneer DVD as slave and no matter what I do it won't bott from CD so I can't install WinXP.
I have tried leaving at just primary HD and secondary CD (other hd and cd removed) etc. to no avail.
The Bios just stops saying "Boot from CD" and nothing happens.
Any ideas?

Dempsey

I have a pioneer DVD aswell, but mine is a secondary master. Check your ribbon cables (where there connecting to the board. i.e. that the HD's are definiely primary IDE and Opticals are Secondary IDE), check jumper settings on opticals and HD, I usually leave them on Cable Select.

Erm, I can't think of anything else, check the basics, I often made one of the above mistakes, and I was sure I didn't. Scratching my head for ages

fatmander

Best thing to start is just use just the drives you need, ie Hard disk and a cd-drive. If that don't work...

If it is a Winxp home/pro it will boot from the cd after the post.
If it is an xpcorp cd(cracked and free), it will not boot after the post, it is a little more complicated to get that workin,
If that's the case, just install and upgrade win2k/me/9X

and don't use the keycode
FCKGW - RHQQ2 - YXRKT - 8TG6W - 2B7Q8
It will destroy any updates you do, sp1 a total no-go.

mewso

Thanks guys. It's a legal copy of windows xp full installation.
I've tried with just one hd and cd to no avail. The bios recognises these drives then when it try to kick off the cd nothing happens. I've tried the hd and cd on one ata cable (with both of my different ata cables) again to no avail.
I've booted from disk, formatted the new hd and can dir the cd and view it's contents but when I run winnt from the cd it says "error reading etc. Abort, Retry, Ignore etc."
I'm at my wits end.

halkar

Try cleaning the CD, it could be dirty also try booting from another computer to see if the cd is damaged or not.
Good luck:)

Dempsey

Make sure the hard drive is properly formatted, that happened me and got the same problem as u

Gerry

In the bios, make sure that the channel with the cd drive on it is set to auto. When it says booting from cd, does the cd drive show any signs of activity?

SemperFi

In BIOS set boot options to CD first, the wjen it asks 'boot from CD, hit any key and it should start install from CD.

SemperFi

Yes I agree with what I just said

Dun

Have you tried starting the install from a bootable floppy disk? The CD should have come with floppy boot disks. If not, you can always d/l a set from the MS Site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8fe6868-6e4f-471c-b455-bd5afee126d8&DisplayLang=en

mewso

Ok thanks for the suggestions guys. I tried most of what you suggest and it didn't work. Cd drive set to auto, hard disk properly formatted. I even created the 6 floppy boot disk from the download and on disk 5 I got a message saying cdrom.sys is corrupt.
I have now reassembled my old pc with both hd and cd roms and the xp cd works fine so I'm beginnning to think it may be a faulty motherboard. Tomorrow at work I'll grab some brand new floppys just in case the 6 disk set I made had some dodgy floppys but I'm at a dead end. My only choice appears to be to contact ocuk, who I bought the mobo from.

leeroybrown

I've made that incredibly annoying 6 CD install boot floppy in the past and it never worked.

If you can fit a bloody working Linux install on a floppy you'd think they'd manage to boot a windows install using less than 6!

halkar

You probably already checked it but make sure your CD Drive is Master as WinXP will not boot from slave drive, you can try having it jumpered as master. I also recommend updating your bios , I can't see any reference to board you said (Abit NV7-S) but nearest I can see is Abit NF7-S I think that is what you have.