Boot from XP CD --> No Video

Hey guys,

I have a bit of a problem.

I have an old linux server that needs to reformatted and have XP Installed. It will boot into fedora fine, there are no problems.

Whenever i try to boot from a disk or CD the screen goes blank and i cant do anything about it. I try a very basic boot floppy, and it gives me a comand prompt. I try a bootable floppy with some tools utils, gets to loading a memory manager, says error, one already loaded then nothing.

If i try and boot from the XP CD which is the ideal way, it prompts

setup is now inspecting your hardware configuration.

Then the screen goes blank. The cd spins for a moment but it doesnt seem to load files or anything. so i seem to think the computer is locking up. I cant find anything in the bios that would seem to affect anything.

I have tried pulling everything off the board, defaulting the bios, different video cards agp/pci and still no change.

Can anyone help me with this or does anyone know of a similar problem with a fix. The cpu is intel and im not sure about the board.

Thanks in advance


CTO

Do you have another XP cd? The one you're using might have errors or something.

After googling around for a little while, i didnt get any definative answers, but i made my own.

As i said in my last post, the linux partition still boots up fine and is responsive. so i asked myself, why?

I had previously tried to boot from the CD without any peripherals plugged in, including the harddrive. I have booted the CD on other machines with no HDD and it works fine (just cant install anything). After this i thought well it cant be the HDD which left me with the Bios & the MoBo.

I couldnt find anything in the bios which would affect any OS. Maybe the MoBo was broke... quite a possibilty but because of my work and the client who this machine belongs to i couldnt just put it down as faulty board and leave it at that...... so i soldiered on..... and on.....

So back to google, i read a few forums between linux and winxp, what happens to a win partition when linux is installed yada yada..... again, i thought none of this was relevant as the CD wouldnt boot even with the harddrive removed....

**

I booted from a very basic floppy, dos622, with no drivers no nothing. I had another floppy that had drivers (mem manager, cd support etc) on it and it hung the system.

Run fdisk, and deleted all partitions (all of which were linux) and did not touch the MBR**.

Once all the partitions were deleted, i could no longer boot off the floppy i did just beforehand, but the CD worked as expected. I am currently puttin XP on now.

So i figured if you guys have a similar problem this might be the fix you are looking for. As far as i was concerned after the "Setup is inspecting your computer hardware configuration" it started looking at the partitions/hard drives. When a drive was present it hung on the partition...... without a harddrive i dont know but it might have something to do with the MoBo (it sucks anyways)


Foot Note: MBR** --> Lol, i just realised because i didnt touch the MBR after windows is finished im gonna have to fix that aswell, i dont think it fixes the MBR on the install..... not sure

Anyways, thanks for your help guys, even though i sorted it out its nice to know there is another world sharing your concern and trying to help..... even when you dont :) lol....

[edit] that is supposed to sound really loving and caring, not sarcastic :p [/edit]


Peace Out


CTO

[edit2] After all that, YES, it was the linux partitions. BUT i dont know why the CD didnt boot without a harddrive installed. [/edit2]

I know that in order to have a dual boot Win XP and Linux configuration, Windows has to be installed first. I think your problem may have had something to do with the Linux bootloader. I should have mentioned that in my last post.

Um,

No you dont HAVE to install Windows first, but for a lot of new users it is the easiest way as linux will detect the windows partitions and accomodate for that, but windows will not detect linux partitions because ... well, for lack of better words, bill gates sucks :p lol

Anyways, it had nothing to do with the boot loader as i didnt touch the MBR, only the partitions.

This thread is closed anyways, Thanks