new pc...no OS installed...boot disk failure

[The House Of Bulk]

hi

need some help getting out of the starting blocks with my new pc

I fire it up with an xp pro disk but screen says "boot disk failure'

I've tried the xp disk on my old machine and autorun takes it right into the setup splash screen so I know the disk is good

I'm assuming the PC is looking at the floppy drive for a boot disk before the cd rom and that I merely need to change the order in which the bios or cmos or some hardware setup screen looks at the drives

1) am I on the right track?
2) I was told to use a disk for the motherboard before anything else but I'm assuming the guy meant AFTER I have the OS installed

any help would be appreciated

[The House Of Bulk]

and xp pro is then smart enough to handle everything else?

[Dingo]

should ya, i had that on my laptop, it wasnt formated and didnt have an os on the harddrive yet, and the harddrive was first on the list, so i made the dvd/cd-rw first and wa bam!

[Janus]

xp is super-easy to install just follow the prompts. and yes u were right just change ur boot order and u should be in good shape.

[The House Of Bulk]

thanks for the replies everyone

ok an update...

the bios had the correct boot order however it's still not loading up with the xp disk

in discussions with other people:

1) the burned copy I was given may not have been done correctly ie) not bootable
2) the cd rom may not be installed/wired up correctly

problem one will be resolved with slaps across my friends face

problem two will be resolved with slaps across the vendors face

[Janus]

make a boot disk from www.bootdisk.com for windows then try it.

[The House Of Bulk]

fuckin' A

I'll give it a shot tonight

thanks

[Kastro]

usually copied OS discs are missing some files and won't install correctly or even do what you are trying to do, boot from the drive. I'd suggest getting the original from someone or doing what the poster above said...

[RavenndudE]

did someone copy it CDtoCD or was ir warezed?

[The House Of Bulk]

I just talked to the guy and he said he did a straight disc copy and that it should be bootable...in addition I described a "can't find media device" message or something to that effect and then a "check cables" warning...it looks to be leaning towards improper hardware setup with regards to the cdrom

I also heard you have to register xp pro online somewhere and that it checks for duplicate copies?

any truth to that?

[PF Boob]

If your winxp cd isnt bootable, I believe it is the same as win2k in that you can boot from a set of floppies. It requires 6 floppies though so get a set handy with labels.

Here is the link from bootdisk.com for creation of the disks.

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

choose which version you have, download the file and run it. Should be good to go from there.

[Jerkasaurus]

Are you sure you saved the bios after your changed it. On mine you can change it then hit esc then it will ask if you want to save changes to cmos or something and i thought that would work but it turns out i have to hit f10 to save it then hit esc then save changes to cmos.

[Janus]

i have a *cough* way of getting around it *cough* pm me on irc and ill just happen to help you with it.

[The House Of Bulk]

I don't have irc

or at least I've never used it

[Janus]

k than AIM - Mantle67

[The House Of Bulk]

*laugh*

I have icq and msn

someone posted some website you could go to and be able to do irc without actually downloading anything...any idea?

[Janus]

yeah it would be a javabased chat room... whats ur email ill just send u the link.

[The House Of Bulk]

actually I just checked with the guy who made me the copy

apparently he made it off a corporate edition version and says you don't need to register it

thanks for the help regardless janus

more info...

I brought my pc into work determined that the copy of xp wasn't bootable...it fired up fine with a legitimate copy of nt

I'm going to use the boot floppies I made from that site listed earlier and see what happens

and for all those that feel this is a lot of reading just keep in mind I also bought a web cam and will eventually be able to show you my penis

[Janus]

the file that i gave him should take care of em, mine works fine.

[The House Of Bulk]

FUCKING A!

I am now online with my new machine

I managed to do it before getting your email janus but thanks regardless

holy FUCK is this video card great...it's so clear it's really not funny

thanks again all who replied to this thread

[Janus]

what did u get ?

[The House Of Bulk]

Originally posted by Janus
what did u get ?

I got an msi geforce 4200 128 meg with bacon and cheese