Formatting HD

[Guest]

I have been unable to finish loading XP Pro on a Dell Dimension XPS300 PC
with 512 MB Ram and a 4.3GB SCSI HD. The setup always stops at the same
place. It was my thought that perhaps I could load ME first and then try the
upgrade. During the XP procedure Shift-F10 yields the command prompt, but It
will not allow me to format the HD. Upon restarting the PC I don't see the
message to format with either the XP or the ME disks. The set up just begins
with Windows and attempts to ccontinue the load procedure with the same end
result as before. How does one bypass this and reformat prior to loading
ME. .....???????????????
Thanks..........CinciDave

 

[Gordon]

I have been unable to finish loading XP Pro on a Dell Dimension XPS300 PC
with 512 MB Ram and a 4.3GB SCSI HD.

4.3 Gb is way too small. Do you REALLY mean 4.3 GB?

 

[Squire]

Are you booting with the XP CD installed ?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I have been unable to finish loading XP Pro on a Dell Dimension
XPS300 PC with 512 MB Ram and a 4.3GB SCSI HD. The setup always stops
at the same place. It was my thought that perhaps I could load ME
first and then try the upgrade. During the XP procedure Shift-F10
yields the command prompt, but It will not allow me to format the
HD. Upon restarting the PC I don't see the message to format with
either the XP or the ME disks. The set up just begins with Windows
and attempts to ccontinue the load procedure with the same end result
as before. How does one bypass this and reformat prior to loading
ME. .....???????????????

Do not load Me first. Just boot from the Windows XP CD (change the BIOS boot
order if necessary to accomplish this) and follow the prompts for a clean
installation (delete the existing partition by pressing "D" when prompted,
then create a new one).

You can find detailed instructions here:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

or here http://windowsxp.mvps.org/XPClean.htm

or here http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

However be aware that a 4.3GB drive is much too small for almost anybody
running Windows XP.

 

[Jim]

I have been unable to finish loading XP Pro on a Dell Dimension XPS300 PC
with 512 MB Ram and a 4.3GB SCSI HD. The setup always stops at the same
place. It was my thought that perhaps I could load ME first and then try
the
upgrade. During the XP procedure Shift-F10 yields the command prompt, but
It
will not allow me to format the HD. Upon restarting the PC I don't see
the
message to format with either the XP or the ME disks. The set up just
begins
with Windows and attempts to ccontinue the load procedure with the same
end
result as before. How does one bypass this and reformat prior to loading
ME. .....???????????????
Thanks..........CinciDave

Sorry, a 4.3 GB disk is way too small for XP. The one on my laptop is
60GB...

Jim

 

[Richard Urban]

Malke told you on Sept. 29 that a 4.3 gig hard drive is way too small. How
old is your computer. How about giving the rest of the specs on this
apparent dinosaur?

--

Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

To all thanks,
I know that a 4.3GB HD is small and slow (300MH) by todays st'ds. The PC is
about 7 years old and I have replaced it very recently. I promised to donate
it to a local school when I got it running again. It came with this HD and
Win 98 and I uggraded it to ME. This dinosour ran fine at that time.

If I can just load ME I would be satisfied at this point, but the HD must be
reformatted first and it just won't stop loading XP. I do have the CD as
first in the BIOS boot order, but that doesn't seem to help at this point.
Any more cogent suggestions?

 

[Gordon]

To all thanks,
I know that a 4.3GB HD is small and slow (300MH) by todays st'ds. The PC
is
about 7 years old and I have replaced it very recently. I promised to
donate
it to a local school when I got it running again. It came with this HD and
Win 98 and I uggraded it to ME. This dinosour ran fine at that time.

If I can just load ME I would be satisfied at this point, but the HD must
be
reformatted first and it just won't stop loading XP. I do have the CD as
first in the BIOS boot order, but that doesn't seem to help at this point.
Any more cogent suggestions?
--

Boot from a W98 floppy and format the HDD from there. Then load ME......

 

[Harry Ohrn MS MVP]

First off 4.3GB is not too small to load XP on. A full install of XP takes
about 2.5 GB so it is possible to install it but you will be very limited by
what else you can add to the setup. Remember that XP takes up a lot of space
with temporary caches and adding service patches. But you can certainly
install XP in 4.3 GB. I've done it many times when testing the OS.

Now to your problem. It is critical that you tell us where setup stops and
what error message you see when the setup stops.

For example do you get to the part where setup has copied all the files to
the system (blue screen with a yellow bar progressing) and the computer
reboots to a graphical screen that welcomes you to Windows XP? Or does the
setup stop before then and tell you that a certain file can not be copied?
If that has happened then look to the hardware as being faulty. Bad RAM or
hard drive problems are likely culprits. Even a flaky power supply can be a
problem at this point.

If you get to the reboot and the screen telling you Welcome to Windows XP
but at some point the install halts then it can still be hardware problems.
Try a bare bones setup. Remove any unnecessary devices like network cards,
modems, sound cards, printer cards, usb devices and just install with the
mouse, keyboard, video, hard drive installed. Once you have XP install you
can always add hardware back and see if you can isolate the problem. See
this info http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;828267 or
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815319

You mention you have a SCSI drive. Are you pressing the F6 key when prompted
to do so shortly after the XP CD has began booting? You need to do that to
add the drivers for your SCSI device from a floppy before the XP installer
can recognize the device. Do you have any peripherals attached such as a
printer with a multi card reader?. USB devices can be interpreted by the
BIOS to be a hard drive and setup will try to begin copying files to it. Of
course it is too small to copy any files and setup will stop.

Finally good luck.

 

[Harry Ohrn MS MVP]

Boot with a Windows 98 or Me floppy. At the command prompt type the
following and press the Enter Key

FDISK

use FDISK to remove any partitions found. They might be non-Dos partitions
which FDISK interprets an NTFS formatted partition as being. Once all
partitions are remove used the FDISK option to create a Primary partition.
Reboot and then use the same Windows 98 or Me floppy to format the drive. If
you need detailed instructions on using FDISK see this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q255867/

 

[Jim]

First off 4.3GB is not too small to load XP on. A full install of XP takes
about 2.5 GB so it is possible to install it but you will be very limited
by what else you can add to the setup. Remember that XP takes up a lot of
space with temporary caches and adding service patches. But you can
certainly install XP in 4.3 GB. I've done it many times when testing the
OS.

It may be possible, but the resulting system would be next to useless
because there would not be enough room on the disk for much more than an
extra small program file folder.
The Windows folder on my laptop uses 2GB. The program file folder uses 1.5
GB. The \i386 folder uses 1.11 GB. The Documents and Settings folder needs
2.6 GB.
You cannot get along without the Windows and \i386 folders. The size of the
program file folder depends on what else you have installed (and I have too
much).

Very soon, you will run out of space with only 4.3 GB.

But, if the OP only wants to give it away, ME would be a good choice. ME
was dead on arrival anyway.

Jim

 

[Harry Ohrn MS MVP]

It may be possible, but the resulting system would be next to useless
because there would not be enough room on the disk for much more than an
extra small program file folder.
The Windows folder on my laptop uses 2GB. The program file folder uses
1.5 GB. The \i386 folder uses 1.11 GB. The Documents and Settings folder
needs 2.6 GB.
You cannot get along without the Windows and \i386 folders. The size of
the program file folder depends on what else you have installed (and I
have too much).

Very soon, you will run out of space with only 4.3 GB.

But, if the OP only wants to give it away, ME would be a good choice. ME
was dead on arrival anyway.

Jim

Thanks for the lesson Jim <g>