XP Installation CD no longer boots ..

[Rez.]

Hi..

So recently I've been messing around with Ubuntu. Well today I finally managed to mess up the MBR and had to use my XP Pro CD (Original) to do just that. I get the usual 'Press any key to boot CD' message and then the all too familliar 'Setup is inspecting your computers hardware' message. Then the screen goes blank and that's it. This happens with every XP disc I own. It is not a hardware problem because I can succefully boot various Linux CDs and my trusty Windows 2000 install CD. They all work without a hitch. But anything XP chokes and dies.

Does anyone have the slightest clue as to what's going on? Or what course of action I may take to regain my XP booting privellage? Thanks in advance for any help ...

[Kelsenellenelvian]

Either make sure your disk has no scratches on it or download the floppy boot images for XP...

[Rez.]

The XP Discs (Original XP Pro, Copy of Original XP Pro and four different unattended XP discs) are fine. I even copied the entire contents of the disc to my HDD and also created an Image out of them just to make sure data could be read. Anyway I slice it I can't believe that all of a sudden 6 XP discs have suddenly all been rendered useless due to scratches.

I already knew of the XP floppy boot option, But thank you all the same.

Anyone else??

[blackzone]

Actually it's "very very" likely it's a hardware problem.

Linux is more fault torrent to hardware problem.

This happens to one of my "old" computer too.

How old is your computer?

[Takeshi]

As the CD loads, after the messages Press F2 and F6, it starts copying files to RAM. I'd not be so confident that it's not a HW problem, esp. RAM. Linux and W2k require less RAM than XP.

Edited August 20, 2006 by Takeshi

[Thunderbolt 2864]

That happened with my computer once. I had to get rid of Windows 95 (I was dual booting Windows 95 and XP, format your whole hard drive) and everything worked.

Or you can download the Windows XP bootup disks and boot it from the floppy, that worked for me as well.

Edited August 20, 2006 by Thunderbolt 2864

[LLXX]

Run MemTest86+ on the machine for a few hours to check the RAM.

Marginal RAM will fail easily, and the XP installation seems to stress the RAM more than usual.

[T D]

I had this problem. I borrowed my friend's Win98SE disc, ran fdisk to delete all partitions (lost data ) and then the XP disc booted properly.

[Rez.]

I did some more searching around last night and came across some interesting info. You guys are all correct that I was hasty thinking it wasn't totally a hardware problem. I came across this last night link which lead to this link and it's all pointing to either a hardware conflict or perhaps the computer is underpowered. I recently had to swap out my power supply for a lower rated one and it's powering an AMD64 proccessor and motherboard.

So, i guess it's up to me to see where the hardware is failing ... Thanks for all the replies guys/gals

For anyone with the same problem, Here's what I found.

An explanation of what's going on and a possible soloution

Thanks again.

Edited August 20, 2006 by Rez.