XP CD Won't Boot

January 20th, 2007, 9:14 pm

I'm using a Dell Dimension 4600 2.4 GHz, 1 GB RAM, 250 GB WD SATA Hard Drive.

I want to reinstall Windows but when I insert the XP CD and press "any key to continue", the screen goes black. I also have a Fedora Linux distro on another partition with Grub installed for the MBR. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get this XP CD to boot? I've used 4 so far and none are working. My classes start on Monday and I need this computer working, so please, HELP!

Thank you!

January 21st, 2007, 1:54 am

try to get in the bios and select the first booting device.. and select your CD rom

hope i helped

January 21st, 2007, 2:03 pm

d4_o2 wrote:

try to get in the bios and select the first booting device.. and select your CD rom

hope i helped

that doesn't sound like the problem because the OP said they got to where it says press any key to boot from the disk. if the cd rom wasn't before the hard drive in the boot device list, it wouldn't have gotten that far.


when the screen goes black, how long do you wait before restarting and trying something else? after you choose to boot from a windows xp cd, the screen does go black momentarily. usually its not for more than a second or two but it may take longer on yours.

January 26th, 2007, 7:48 pm

AnarchY SI wrote:

Quote:

when the screen goes black, how long do you wait before restarting and trying something else?

The screen stays black indefinitely. I have left it for up to three hours and it has stayed like that.

I even tried booting the cd other ways, like pressing F12 on start up so I get my boot menu, but even when I tell it to boot from the CD-ROM that way, the same result happens.

I reluctantly called Dell support, and their best guess was that it was the XP cd, so they're sending me a new one. But I don't think it's that, because I have tried 4 XP cd's total, and I get the same result with them all.

February 1st, 2007, 1:06 am

I too am experiencing this exact same behavior on an IBM T30 laptop. The behavior happens with a legit XP disk as well as my BartPE disk which has never failed to load. Fedora 6 changed something on the HD that makes these discs fail to boot; I have no idea how.

Unfortunatly, you are correct; new XP cds from dell will be no help. Anyone know what Fedora did? I'm just glad I imaged my windows install before screwing with stuff. Problem is, I can't get my Bart disk to load up to restore anything. Ahhh Fun Stuff!

Any ideas, simple as they may be, would be greatly appreciated

February 1st, 2007, 10:58 am

mojobird70 wrote:

I too am experiencing this exact same behavior on an IBM T30 laptop. The behavior happens with a legit XP disk as well as my BartPE disk which has never failed to load. Fedora 6 changed something on the HD that makes these discs fail to boot; I have no idea how.

Unfortunatly, you are correct; new XP cds from dell will be no help. Anyone know what Fedora did? I'm just glad I imaged my windows install before screwing with stuff. Problem is, I can't get my Bart disk to load up to restore anything. Ahhh Fun Stuff!

Any ideas, simple as they may be, would be greatly appreciated

what exactly is your problem? just that you can't boot into windows after installing fedora? is there an entry for fedora in the bootloader?

February 23rd, 2007, 7:39 am

I was having the same problem and came across this page. I solved my issue and it might help you solve yours so I figured I would post it here. I was only having the problem booting into the XP/Ghost CDs due to the Fedora partition being on the HD. As I needed to reimage the XP partition what I ended up doing what using the grub loader command "hide (hd0,3)" to hide the linux partition. Note, once you do this you will NOT be able to boot back into linux until you unhide that partition, and grub itself will probably stop functioning properly as it will not be able to see the grub.conf file.

February 23rd, 2007, 10:58 am

zENGER wrote:

Note, once you do this you will NOT be able to boot back into linux until you unhide that partition, and grub itself will probably stop functioning properly as it will not be able to see the grub.conf file.

or until you reinstall the bootloader which is a pretty easy process and i've detailed the steps a couple of times on the linux forum. XP writes its own bootloader when you install it so :shrug: thats usually all you have to do as long as XP doesn't overwrite your linux partition

May 5th, 2007, 1:27 am

I had the same problem, many times before, and each time I was able to avoid it in some way, until now.
It happened on different computers and different hard drives, with windows 2000 and XP, and Linux seems to have something to do with that, but it does not (not in my case, anyway).
My opinion is that some more 'complicated' partitioning makes the windows setup program to freeze. When I boot from CD, after the message "Press any key to boot from CD", I can see for a fraction of a second the message "Setup is inspecting your computer hardware configuration", and after than, black screen. I left it that way overnight, and nothing has happened.
I have a brand new 320GB SATA hard drive, which has never seen Linux. My current partitioning is:
100MB primary partition unformatted
10GB primary partition unformatted
32GB primary partition, active, windows XP installation
rest of the disk free space

This way the windows CD boots fine. If I create an extended partition in the remaining free space, no mater if it contains any logical partition, or the type of the logical partition, or if it is formated or not, or after the extended partition there is unallocated space or not, the windows XP CD won't boot anymore.

In the past I thought that I have a solution for this problem, that is, I have to have 8MB of unallocated free space at the end of the drive. This time nothing works, and I see myself in the situation that if I need to reinstall windows for some reason (and I know that there will be a strong reason for this), I will have to buy another hard drive, or lose all data in the big 250GB partition that I will create. This is my wife's computer, on mine I lost windows entirely some years ago...

May 7th, 2007, 5:58 pm

Had the same problem on an optiplex 745 system that had some form of unix on it but luckily I didn't need what was on the system.
I booted off a Win98 CD, ran fdisk and deleted the partitions.
Setup worked after that.

May 8th, 2007, 10:52 pm

I had the same issue with an Acer Travelmate 2450.. nothing seems to work..At the beginning I thought the HDD wasn't working but it was fine in the BIOS.. I used several XP CDs including original ones but after the "inspecting your computer hardware configuration" a blak screen. I had a Windows 98SE CD and I booted from it and run fdisk and deleted the NTFS partition. then I changed back to my XP CD and the installation runs fine. Thanks a lot...

May 24th, 2007, 7:39 pm

Another possible solution might be to boot from a Windows Server 2003 CD. With this CD is possible to make a successful boot even if you have several partitions in your HDD.
Windows XP CD won't boot if you have several partitions in your HDD but Windows Server 2003 will do.
Then you can run the recovery system option by pressing "R" to run then the command "FIXMBR".
This command even thought is from a WS2003 CD should work in a WXP system but I cannot guarantee it since I haven't tried it yet.

May 27th, 2007, 4:26 pm

Im having the same problem.

though i think i ve narrowed it down more than this thread.
just bought a 320sata HD installed a sata pci card.
im not trying to boot off this HD.
i have linux on seperate HD.
windows wouldnt install when my sata was plugged in. just like above.
i would unplug the sata and it would boot fine.

==bottom line windows doesnt like my sata HD.==
note. the HD was formatted with windows, it booted the first time when it was blank. after that...

if anyone has any suggestions (a windows driver or patch, fix) i would appreciate it.

colin

[grinch2171]

May 29th, 2007, 5:57 am

It is a stretch but may work.

You will need to acquire your SATA drivers for the card/hard drive and put them on a floppy disk. When you are booting the Windows install at the bottom will be a message stating something about pressing F6 to load RAID/SCSI drivers. This is where you will need the floppy disk. Follow the onscreen instructions and hopefully windows will recognize your SATA stuff and allow you to install.

January 12th, 2008, 7:41 am

I had the exact same problem as others in this thread, and it prevented booting my Win XP CD, as well as different builds of UBCD4Win burnt to a CD and a DVD. (UBCD4Win is a BartPE-based boot disc which uses the Win XP CD in its build.)

The obvious causes (BIOS boot order, failure to "Press any key to boot from CD", etc) didn't apply. After the message "Press any key to boot from CD" (I did), a quick message flashed something like "Setup is examining the system hardware configuration", and that led to an eternal blank gray screen. (The UBCD4Win discs would boot their boot menu, from which non-Windows based apps such as DOS utilities would boot. But if the main UBCD4Win boot item, which boots a ram-based version of XP, was selected the setup message and gray screen followed as above.)

I wracked my brain for a couple of weeks for ideas, and tried several different search phrases in Google. Though I found several cases of the problem in forums, this was the only thread anywhere that gave any clue to how to solve the problem -- the idea that it might be related to dual booting and/or a complicated partitioning scheme. Thanks guys for taking the time to share! Sometimes even inconclusive ideas get the ball rolling.

I got my discs working as a result. For background, my partitioning scheme is as follows on an HP Pavilion dv1316ap laptop with a nominal 80 GB hard disk:

1. Primary 1 - Win XP C:\ boot partition
2. Primary 2 - Extended partition containing the following logical partitions in this order:
   
   • 6 NTFS partitions for Win XP
   • 1 FAT32 partition for sharing Win XP/Suse 10.0
   • 1 NTFS partition for Win XP
   • 1 Linux Swap2 partition for Suse 10.0
   • 1 ReiserFS partition mapped to Suse / (the Suse 10.0 boot partition)
   • 5 Linux LVM logical volumes (show as "unknown" or"unformatted" in Windows, but are mapped to Suse ReiserFS partitions)
   • 1 NTFS partition for Win XP
3. Primary 3 - the HP-installed Linux-based QuickPlay partition

Problem was solved by this procedure:

(Note: Here I used the very convenient and powerful Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8 Special Edition, a free version of the commercial app, to read and hide partitions from the Windows side. This could have also been done with a number of other apps from Windows, DOS, or Linux. But Win XP's Disk Management applet can not be used; it can not hide/unhide partitions nor will it show any useful info for Linux partitions.)

1. Hid all Suse partitions from Win XP using Paragon HDM8 menu item Partition > Hide Partition:
   
   • Partition ID's, as shown in HDM8, changed as a result (basically the "8" byte is set to "9"):
     
     • Swap partition (File system always shows "Linux Swap2"):
       "0x82 Linux swap" → "Unknown partition ID (92)"
     • Root partition, used for booting (File system always shows "ReiserFS"):
       "0x83 Linux native" → "0x93 Linux hidden"
     • Other partitions, which are Linux logical volumes (File system always shows "Not formatted"):
       "0x8E Linux LVM" → "Unknown partition ID (9E)"
   • Didn't seem to hide anything as far as Win XP's Disk Management applet (in Administrative Tools > Computer Management) was concerned; it still listed them as before.
2. Started Suse normally, which seems to be required for the above changes to be effective:
   
   • Suse could still be started normally from the Win XP boot menu that appears at boot time. (I use Grub as the Linux boot loader, installed to /'s boot sector. A copy of /'s boot sector is placed as a file in Win XP and entered in its boot.ini file. This creates a Suse entry in Win XP's boot menu, which can be used to boot Grub's boot menu. It's based on this article)
     
   • In Suse's Partitioner applet, the partitions now appeared as:
     
     • All Suse partitions, except the root partition, /, were listed as type “unknown”.
     • / was listed as type “Amoeba”. (This seems to be causing confusion in some online forums. I found through searches that partition type lists often label ID "93" as "Amoeba", for the Amoeba OS, but it is also a "Hidden Linux native partition". See this list of partition IDs.)
3. Shut down Suse, after which the Win XP CD booted normally. (A UBCD4Win DVD also worked.)

Notes:

1. Why did the problem suddenly appear?
   
   • Suse 10.0 has been installed since May 2006, but only booted a few times since.
   • UBCD4Win, both CD and DVD builds, were burnt in Oct 2007 and booted several times over at least the next week.
   • The UBCD4Win discs were first noted as unable to boot a month after burning. My logs show that the only major activity in the meantime was some rather extensive defragging tests of the Windows partitions/MFTs, and upgrading Windows Script Host from v5.6 to v5.7.
   • I first noted that the Win XP CD wouldn't boot after a laptop mainboard repair another month later. I hadn't tried booting it since before creating the UBCD4Win discs, but it had always booted OK. (Originally I had thought this was related to the repair, until I realized the UBCD4Win problem was connected.)
   • I remember that when I first opened the Suse Partitioner, the ID of the Suse boot partition showed as "Amoeba", so apparently Windows or Suse had already hidden this partition, probably when I originally set up my dual-boot arrangement mentioned above. (But the other Suse partitions were not hidden.)
   • Bottomline: I don't know, but the above may give someone some clues.
2. Possible reasons why this solution works:
   
   • Hiding the Suse partitions simplifies the process for the disc-booting Win XP system to dealing only with Windows partitions (and 1 “unknown” QuickPlay partition).
   • The Suse partitions are positioned before the last Windows partition in the extended partition, and hiding them allows the booting system to find that partition.
3. Other observations:
   
   • I had initially tried unhiding the Linux partitions back in Windows, and the boot discs continued to work at first. But somewhere in the process of switching between OS's the problem was re-activated, and I had to go through the above process all over again, this time leaving the Suse partitions permanently hidden.
   • Hiding only the boot partition ( / in this case) does not solve the problem. All the Suse partitions must be hidden.
   • Hiding of the HP QuickPlay partition (listed in HDM8 as type "0x88 Linux plaintext partition table", and not listed at all in Suse's Partitioner applet), was not necessary. Possibly this is because it comes after all the Windows and Suse partitions as the last of 3 primary partitions.

Thanks again to everyone. Hope this helps.