CD won't boot for new install

[Bill Woodward]

I have built a computer for my wife and when I attempt to install
Windows XP Home, the disc won't boot. The hard drive has been
formatted. The CD/DVD drive is working because I can boot it with the
Partition Magic CD. When I try to boot the Windows CD I just get a
blinking cursor. The CD is the full version. Sounds like a hardware
problem but I can't figure it out. Am I missing something?

Bill W.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

In order to boot from the Windows XP CD, you must
open your BIOS and set the CD drive as the 1st bootable
device and your hard drive as the 2nd bootable device.

Clean Install Windows XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

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:

| I have built a computer for my wife and when I attempt to install
| Windows XP Home, the disc won't boot. The hard drive has been
| formatted. The CD/DVD drive is working because I can boot it with the
| Partition Magic CD. When I try to boot the Windows CD I just get a
| blinking cursor. The CD is the full version. Sounds like a hardware
| problem but I can't figure it out. Am I missing something?
|
| Bill W.

 

[Bill Woodward]

In order to boot from the Windows XP CD, you must
open your BIOS and set the CD drive as the 1st bootable
device and your hard drive as the 2nd bootable device.

Clean Install Windows XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

I have tried that, and it still won't boot. Like I said, it will boot
other bootable CDs. I have created an active partition to load Windows
on. When I view the hard drive with Partition Magic, it shows the
remaining logical drive as C. I thought the first partition created was
always C. Maybe this is the problem? But I don't know how to fix it.

 

[leckster90]

which OSs bootable disk did you use to partition the hard drive since
you canot boot xp home?

 

[Bill Woodward]

I used fdisk on a floppy.

which OSs bootable disk did you use to partition the hard drive since
you canot boot xp home?

 

[Guest]

Sounds like you may have created an extended partition with logical
partitions or something and used PM to activate a logical partition somehow..
You really don't need to use anything but the XP CD to format and partition
prior to installation..
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp
j;-j