Burning a bootable copy of windows xp! HELP!

First off let me say i appoligize for not putting this in the correct forum, but i couldent find one relating to this.

OK, i formatted my other computers harddrive completely, nothing is on it at all.
Problem is, i thought my computer came with a windows xp installation cd...it dident.
So i downloaded (i know i know, but 140$ for windows xp i cant afford it right now) windows xp professional and got the setup xp icon and the file. if i try running it on THIS computer its fine.. but i burned it to an ISO disk using nero, copy and pasted the "setup xp" file and burned it, went in to the bios changed it so cdrom loads first, and restarted.. and its no-go.

HELP!

thanks in advance,

mastacracka

if you are going to install winxp - you might as well use a slipstreamed version (one with sp2 integrated) this also should take care of your boot problem

goto:
http://www.windows-help.net/WindowsX...p2-bootcd.html

and here is the boot img they are talking about

There is always an option to make a cd bootable in nero when you first burn it..

you might also wanna try putting the cd in and putting a win98 boot floppydisk in the machine and when it takes you to A:\ prompt navigate to the cdrom and see if it has a folder for making setup floppy disks (i cant remember if xp does, 2000 does). I know with 2000 it will get you to make setup disks .. you put them in when asked form them (number one obviously at boot time) and from there just follow the prompts.

Perfect Tutorial for you here :
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=262329

forgot about that one -- sorry SDK ;)

wow guys, thank you all a bunch this was very helpful


cheers-
mastacracka

djscribble- no go, i followed every step on that but i just dident intergrate the sp2 pack bc ill just d/l it after i get it isntalled , but i did everything else correct poped in the cd and all i get is a "_" at the top left side of the screen that blinks indefinality

Can you CD-Rom bootable? What is the boot order in your bios?

Quote:

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but i burned it to an ISO disk using nero, copy and pasted the "setup xp" file and burned it, went in to the bios changed it so cdrom loads first, and restarted.. and its no-go.

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If the copy of xp you downloaded was bootable you buggered it up by adding setup.exe. You should just have burned from image and that would have been ok.

Non bootable copies of xp can be made bootable and there was a link to a tute post here on AO ages ago, which i can not find now. You can download a set of files to make a boot enviroment from floppy disks from microsoft.

Since when did we start helping people burn warez????

Your computer *should* have an original copy of windows IF you bought your computer with windows xp preinstalled. If you didn't get a copy of the windows cd AND a license, complain to the store you bought it from. You paid for it so it should have been included. Unless offcourse if you bought the computer WITHOUT Windows XP on it. In that case pay up or install any of the "free" OSs.