Not able to boot from my XP CD

[alexdhl]

I'm reformating (or what's it called.. at least deleting everything, and reinstalling XP)..
So I put the XP cd in, reboots, and choose First Boot Device CD/DVD in the BIOS, then I press OK.
So when it's supposed to start up again, it just appears a black screen with an underscore "_" blinking.
Don't know what to do..
And the CD's supposed to work, I've tried two..
Thanks for any help :)

[andyswork@beci.net]

Try typing D: dir or E: dir this will tell you if the cd is being read. I myself like to do my own deletion of a partision, and formatting, and setting it up active, then installing windows. Get the name of your hard drive and go to their web site and download their harddrive tools. Then you will be able to set your harddrive up for windows. They are other ways but this is the one I use. I also use a program called partion magic sometimes.

[pangea33]

It sounds to me like most of what you're seeing is bios activity, and you never actually get into the disk. I really don't think you've got any partitioning problems. Some people like to make backups of their XP install disk in order to protect the original. Since you've used two, I hope they're backups. If two original manufactured XP disks failed, you're likely to have a hardware problem.

If all the original files were copied onto the hard drive, and then burned onto a new cd, 2 possibilities come to mind. First, if "show hidden files" and "show system files" weren't enabled, there are some missing. Second, if you're sure all the files were copied, is it possible the disk wasn't burned as bootable? If it's the second scenario, then you've got an easy fix. This link will show you how to extract the required img to make your XP install disk bootable.

http://www.theeldergeek.com/slipstreamed_xpsp2_cd.htm

[Erik]

Do you have more than one optical drive? The drive that will be used to boot from is the secondary master drive. That is assuming that you have two IDE channels, and one is used for the HD and the other for CD.

Another thought, you might get a problem if you have both drives on the same channel. The CD drive would need to be set as the master drive in order to boot from it.

[Paul Komski]

it just appears a black screen with an underscore "_" blinking.
That sounds like an unsuccessful boot or unsuccessful access to the HDD and not to the CD. Or (if there are no suitable partitions on the HDD or none is marked as active) a failed "copying of files" to the HDD. Either delete all partitions and boot to the CD or setup just one marked as active partition formatted as FAT at the start of the drive. Then try again and watch out for any prompts to press a key in order to boot to the CD.