Boot/Installation Problems

[Guest]

Hello,

I ordered the Vista beta 2 dvds and am currently trying to install, but it
keeps giving me a variety of problems. The system I'm installing it on is a
brand new system I've just built, and it has a clean hard drive. When I try
and boot the installer from the dvd, it gives me a load of errors. Sometimes
it says "CDBOOT: Couldn't find BOOTMGR", and sometimes it actually tells me
to press any key to boot from the cd/dvd. When I do get it to boot, it takes
an insanely long time to work, and then gives me errors along the lines of "A
device Windows needs is inaccessible" and "No valid OS entry".

I know the DVDs are good, since it managed to boot fine on this machine.

 

[Guest]

Have you booted any CD properly? Verify by booting your XP CD. Do you have
your bios set to boot from CD? Is iyour CD drive an IDE or USB drive? If
IDE, connect it to the second controller, not on the same one with the hard
drive.

 

[Guest]

I'm also having the same problem. I got my copy of beta 2 yesterday and can
not get the DVD to boot.

The machine will boot any CD/DVD I throw at it, so I know the settings are
good. The HDDs are on the Primary controller and DVD + CD are on the
Secondary controller.

Any thoughts?

 

[John Barnes]

I haven't seen a clean resolution, but a number have done a minimal
installation of XP on a small partition and run the DVD from the desktop.
If you already have another system, run it from there. You can still do the
clean install. Vista has partition abilities, so you can delete the XP
partition later and expand the Vista partiton to include the space.