XP installation problems

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mrobst
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:30 am

XP installation problems

Post by mrobst »

HI All,

I bought at fit-pc2 a few weeks ago with Ubuntu 8.04 on (Linux is my preferred OS). All worked OK until I realised that the USB VGA adapter I bought needed windows drivers to work. I read through many of the posts on here about installing XP and thought I'd give it a go......

I've got an original XP professional installation CD and first tried this in 2 different USB CD drives but neither of them appeared to be recognised by the BIOS. So I followed one set of instructions to make a USB key bootable with the installation and got this to work at least partially. The text mode install of XP (step 1) pretty much worked fine but as soon as I have to reboot into the 2nd stage GUI install I get failures with missing hal.sys errors. I didn't manage to get around this so I tried again with the USB key (which does boot OK) and using a different method where the key boots into DOS and I then use NC to copy the windows installation files across to the fit-pc2 so they can be installed directly at next boot.

However I can't get past the fdisk part of this process because it appears that the fit-pc2 hard disk is no longer available.
Booting into DOS with the USB key gives me a C: drive as the key but no other drive letter to format. fdisk only shows a single fixed drive and doesn't let me change to any other (option 5 to change drives hangs). If I change the USB key type in BIOS to removable (it defaults to fixed) then the fit-pc2 boots with DOS as the A drive and hangs.

If I boot the fit-pc2 with no USB key in at all I either get "NTLDR" missing or "Operating system not found" errors.

From research I'm guessing that I've got a problem with the MBR or boot sector on the drive somewhere, although I don't understand why this trips me up when attempting to do a complete fresh install. I've taken the drive out and reseated it just to try an eliminate hardware error and I'm assuming the disk works because of the errors I get on boot and because it still shows in the BIOS.

Any pointers would be appreciated, its been driving me crazy for days now! I've got either XP or Linux install CDs and only a USB key so any method that uses these would be great. If I'm missing something obvious about the USB CD drives not working please let me know (I'll buy a cheap one if it helps).
Right now I'm going to try and boot a Linux OS direct from the USB key and use various tools to try and see if I still have a hard drive and what state it is in!

any advice appreciated
Marcus

mrobst
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:30 am

Re: XP installation problems

Post by mrobst »

I got a bit further today. Worked out from the postings in the BIOS forum that my "operating system not found" is a BIOS bug caused by the extended startup test being on. After I got round this I got back to the NTLDR missing error.
Managed to get Knoppix installed on a USB key and booted from this. Using the partition tools I could then format the main hard drive as NTFS and get started with the XP install. However this still fails on the first reboot (after copy installation files) with disk errors.
Now I've installed GRUB to the MBR and can at least boot directly the fit-pc2. I'm currently in the process of installing Knoppix to a partition on the main hard drive so I don't keep having to use the USB key and have copied all the XP installation files to the first partition formatted as NTFS. I'm going to try and boot into DOS from a USB key and start the XP installation that way (from D drive?).

mrobst
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:30 am

Re: XP installation problems

Post by mrobst »

OK I pretty much got there in the end so I'll post what happened in case someone else has similar issues.

I seemed to have gone wrong by copying the XP installation files onto an already formatted NTFS partition. When installing I couldn't then reformat (as it deleted the install files) and this also gave Disk Error when rebooting part way through the install.
I created a 5Gb DOS (FAT32) primary partition and then booted from a USB key with the XP install files on it. Running A:\i386\winnt.exe then copied the install files to the DOS partition and for the first time rebooted correctly from the main hard drive. It was then possible to install windows by formatting unused space on the drive as NTFS and installing into this. So far it's worked and I'm in the process of downloading the fit-pc2 drivers to get the devices working correctly.

Many thanks to this post:
http://weblogzz.blogspot.com/2008/01/in ... drive.html
(and the next page on booting NTFS from DOS if I'd read it in time!).

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