install XP Pro from CD question

[Bob K.]

Hi,

I've been running XP Pro for about a year and started having some problems
so I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. Sounds good but now I can't get
XP to install from the CD or a copy of the CD that I copied over to another
drive before reformatting. The first thing I tried was to change my boot
sequence to have my PC boot from the CD drive. This does not start the
install process. When I go to the CD or the hard drive copy and try to
start the setup. exe file manually it says it can't run under DOS. This
makes sense but what is the right way to get this to boot either from the CD
or copy while in DOS after having booted with a startup disk. Right now my
PC has a freshly reformatted C drive and an XP CD and hard drive copy of the
CD. All are accessible from the command prompt.

Ideas on how to get this started?

thanks!

 

[Mike Brearley]

Hi,

I've been running XP Pro for about a year and started having some problems
so I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. Sounds good but now I can't get
XP to install from the CD or a copy of the CD that I copied over to another
drive before reformatting. The first thing I tried was to change my boot
sequence to have my PC boot from the CD drive. This does not start the
install process. When I go to the CD or the hard drive copy and try to
start the setup. exe file manually it says it can't run under DOS. This
makes sense but what is the right way to get this to boot either from the CD
or copy while in DOS after having booted with a startup disk. Right now my
PC has a freshly reformatted C drive and an XP CD and hard drive copy of the
CD. All are accessible from the command prompt.

Ideas on how to get this started?

thanks!

It's not setup.exe for Windows XP. You'll want to run winnt.exe from the
i386 directory on the CD. Make sure to have smartdrv loaded or it will take
quite a long time to do the initial copy.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley

 

[purplehaz]

Get an xp boot disk here:
www.bootdisk.com
Boot to it and then run winnt.exe (not setup.exe, that's for old win9x)

 

[Bob K.]

any suggestions on where i can find a copy of smartdrv.exe? I've been
looking around my system and can't find it.

thanks again

 

[Mike Brearley]

any suggestions on where i can find a copy of smartdrv.exe? I've been
looking around my system and can't find it.

thanks again

I assume (maybe incorrectly) that you are booting to a boot disk and
isntalling via the CD. Download the 'Windows 98 SE Custom, No Ramdrive'
disk from http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm, write the image to a disk
and boot to that disk. Before running winnt.exe to start the setup, from
the command prompt, type smartdrv and it should load smartdrv.

--
Posted 'as is'. If there are any spelling and/or grammar mistakes, they
were a direct result of my fingers and brain not being synchronized or my
lack of caffeine.

Mike Brearley

 

[CS]

any suggestions on where i can find a copy of smartdrv.exe? I've been
looking around my system and can't find it.

thanks again

You can find it on a system running Win98 - ME. Or, if you have an
EBD from Win98 you can copy it from there. It is not part of XP.

 

[purplehaz]

The xp boot disk at www.bootdisk.com has smartdrv on it to speed up the
install process.

 

[Michael Stevens]

Hi,

I've been running XP Pro for about a year and started having some
problems so I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. Sounds good but
now I can't get XP to install from the CD or a copy of the CD that I
copied over to another drive before reformatting. The first thing I
tried was to change my boot sequence to have my PC boot from the CD
drive. This does not start the install process. When I go to the CD
or the hard drive copy and try to start the setup. exe file manually
it says it can't run under DOS. This makes sense but what is the
right way to get this to boot either from the CD or copy while in DOS
after having booted with a startup disk. Right now my PC has a
freshly reformatted C drive and an XP CD and hard drive copy of the
CD. All are accessible from the command prompt.

Ideas on how to get this started?

thanks!

You boot from the CD and do a clean install.
Click on or copy and paste the link below into your web browser address bar.
How to clean install XP.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
--

Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://michaelstevenstech.com
For a better newsgroup experience. Setup a newsreader.
http://michaelstevenstech.com/outlookexpressnewreader.htm

 

[Alex Nichol]

I've been running XP Pro for about a year and started having some problems
so I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. Sounds good but now I can't get
XP to install from the CD or a copy of the CD that I copied over to another
drive before reformatting. The first thing I tried was to change my boot
sequence to have my PC boot from the CD drive. This does not start the
install process. When I go to the CD or the hard drive copy and try to
start the setup. exe file manually it says it can't run under DOS. This
makes sense but what is the right way to get this to boot either from the CD
or copy while in DOS after having booted with a startup disk.

You *ought* to be able to boot from the CD, in which case it will get to
a screen that includes Setup and Repair. Take Setup; after the license
agreement you get the choice of either 'Repair Installation' which is
what I would try first, or of New Install. In that, when it asks where
to put the system, hit ESC and select the present partition, delete it
and make a new RAW one to format at the next stage.

If you cannot persuade the machine to boot the CD, you can install from
a DOS mode boot floppy, eg a Win98 one - start with an
FDISK
to delete the current partition
SMARTDRV
then go to the CD and,
CD \i386
WINNT

I *think* this will give you the opportunity to create the partition, in
which case you may be able to make it NTFS, but I have not actually
tried, and you may need to make the partition in the FDISK and reboot to
Format it before going into the WINNT

 

[Bob K.]

This finally worked. I had to create a new set of boot disks since my older
ones had a few bad files on them. I used the SP1 boot disk files on the
microsoft website instead of using what was on the CD. For some reason my
PC won't boot from the CD drive. I can set it to do so in the BIOS but it
still didn't work. This is the PC because I put the same CD in my laptop to
test it and it worked fine. One of those things I guess.

The only other problem I'm having at this point is the NIC card issue
described in my other posting "lose network connection with XP Pro -SP1
" posted on 8/29. IF anyone has any ideas on this I'd appreciate it as it
is driving me nuts!

Thanks to all for your help!

Bob

I've been running XP Pro for about a year and started having some problems
so I decided to reformat and reinstall XP. Sounds good but now I can't get
XP to install from the CD or a copy of the CD that I copied over to another
drive before reformatting. The first thing I tried was to change my boot
sequence to have my PC boot from the CD drive. This does not start the
install process. When I go to the CD or the hard drive copy and try to
start the setup. exe file manually it says it can't run under DOS. This
makes sense but what is the right way to get this to boot either from the CD
or copy while in DOS after having booted with a startup disk.

You *ought* to be able to boot from the CD, in which case it will get to
a screen that includes Setup and Repair. Take Setup; after the license
agreement you get the choice of either 'Repair Installation' which is
what I would try first, or of New Install. In that, when it asks where
to put the system, hit ESC and select the present partition, delete it
and make a new RAW one to format at the next stage.

If you cannot persuade the machine to boot the CD, you can install from
a DOS mode boot floppy, eg a Win98 one - start with an
FDISK
to delete the current partition
SMARTDRV
then go to the CD and,
CD \i386
WINNT

I *think* this will give you the opportunity to create the partition, in
which case you may be able to make it NTFS, but I have not actually
tried, and you may need to make the partition in the FDISK and reboot to
Format it before going into the WINNT