Reinstalling winxp-pro problems

[daytrader]

Bought a new unformatted western digital 320gb hd but having time consuming
problems getting winxp-pro installed on it. My winxp-pro cd is not bootable
since it is a corporate version. So I ran wd's lifeguard utility cd to
format drive. Then I could not find a bootable xp floppy with cd support so
I used my win98me bootable floppy. I have done this in the past many times
but with smaller drives. With this drive my win98me floppy will not
recognize my hd even though it does show up during startup. Initially I used
NTFS and when that did not work I went back to 32 bytes.

Next I deleted the partition and ran win98me fdisk. This allowed me to see
the hd. Started smardriv.exe and put in my winxp cd, changed directory to
\i386 and ran winnt.exe. It came up with error that it could not find my hd
to load the temporary files.

Since I have reload winxp many times before but with smaller drives is my
problem that I can not see this hard drive? If so how do I get around this
since my winxp is before sp1 came out and not bootable?

 

[Guest]

Settle for a partition less than 137 gigs. Your lack of proper install tools
is going to prevent using the whole disk, (at least not without a third part
after-fix by Partition Magic or whatever)

 

[drbtosh]

Sorry I sent it to wrong place at first.

What do you mean by lack of proper install tools? Which parts are missing?

Why doesn't Western Digital formatting work or do I need to partition to
136gb at first and expand later?

 

[Guest]

BartPE is a 'preinstall environment' available for download that will let you
run setup from winnt32.exe.

(BartPE) bootable live windows CD-DVD: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

I suggest making a restore point on the system you download the cd to,
create the cd, and restore the system, then use the boot disk to run the
corporate install.

 

[drbtosh]

I have no system on my computer into which I have put the new hd so there is
no way to do a restore. Thus I do not understand this procedure.

I down loaded pebuilder but it looks like it assumes that my winxp is a
bootable cd, which it is not, right? If so, how can I incorporate a bootable
cd into the pebuilder when it creates the new cd with the sp2 and winxp
data?

 

[Guest]

You should be able to copy the setup disk to the drive with the preinstall
environment.

 

[GreenieLeBrun]

Bought a new unformatted western digital 320gb hd but having time
consuming problems getting winxp-pro installed on it. My winxp-pro cd is
not bootable since it is a corporate version. So I ran wd's lifeguard
utility cd to format drive. Then I could not find a bootable xp floppy
with cd support so I used my win98me bootable floppy. I have done this in
the past many times but with smaller drives. With this drive my win98me
floppy will not recognize my hd even though it does show up during
startup. Initially I used NTFS and when that did not work I went back to
32 bytes.

Next I deleted the partition and ran win98me fdisk. This allowed me to see
the hd. Started smardriv.exe and put in my winxp cd, changed directory to
\i386 and ran winnt.exe. It came up with error that it could not find my
hd to load the temporary files.

Since I have reload winxp many times before but with smaller drives is my
problem that I can not see this hard drive? If so how do I get around this
since my winxp is before sp1 came out and not bootable?

How to obtain Windows XP Setup boot disks
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994

 

[DrB]

Spent many hours and found out the HD was defective. Put in replacement into
my other computer and ran Western Digital Tools to partition it for the full
320gb. it formatted it to NTFS in same step. Sure was a lot faster than
using Windows. Copied to the new drive the WinXP setup files with SP2
slipstreamed into it. However after installing into son's new computer and
running Bart's PE Builder v3110a to get a windows environment I went into
the I386 found and no files were viewable, even though all other folders had
their files. So I just type in WinNT32.exe and windows started but came up
with error that "no valid system partitions wee found. Setup is unable to
continue". What did I do wrong?

I was able to find the I386 folder files by running A43 Environment. Even
running WinNT32.exe from there comes up with same error message.