windows xp pro

[PMD]

I cannot load xp pro, started with a clean 160gb HDD, new
soyo motherboard, sony cd-rw, 3.5 floppy. It gives a blue
screen, an option to load a third party hdd driver by
selecting f-6, f-6 does nothing. goes to next screen and
shows f-2 option, then stalls with no prompts. have a
third party driver for the hdd, but cannot install it.

 

[Alex]

have you partioned and formated the drive

 

[rifleman]

have you partioned and formated the drive

Please quote the post you are replying to - thank you.

 

[John Barnett - MVP]

Two suggestions:

First, does your new motherboard support drives above
132GB? If not then a bios update maybe required.

Second, and this may be the deciding factor, create a
partition of 10 or 20GB to install XP on. You don't say
whether your drive is partitioned ot not. If it isn't
160GB is hell of a lot of space. I only have 80GB and 3
operating systems are installed on it. I use 20GB for XP,
10GB for XP Media Center edition, and 10GB for Windows
Server 2003. I am only using half my hard drive capacity.
Currently i don't need any more space. So try the
partition first.

You would be better using a Windows 98 or Me startup disk
(you can download one from www.bootdisk.com) Insert the
floppy into your floppy drive and boot up with CD
support. AT the 'A' prompt type 'fdisk' (without the
quotes). Go through the screens and create a primary
partition of the size you think you will need. After
creating the partition insert your xp cd into your cd-rom
and reboot. Xp should then install.

Remember your bios should be set so that you can boot
from your cd. As you have already tried to install xp i
assume that the boot from cd option is already enabled.
This note is just a reminder that the cd boot option
doies need to be enabled for you to boot from your xp cd.

Hope this helps

John Barnett - MVP
Associate Expert