Windows XP Pro installation woes

[Relztrah]

I am attempting to install Windows XP Pro on an IBM NetVista machine. The computer boots fine but shows no OS. I fire it up with the Windows CD in the drive, begin installation by selecting a partition, formatting it, and installing Windows on that partition--the largest of two partitions. (The other is only 900 MB.)

Setup loads files normally. Please wait while setup copies files to the Windows installation folders. This might take... And, Setup is copying files... showing a progress bar.

So far so good. When the bar reaches 100%, Please wait while Setup initializes your Windows XP Configuration. And, This portion of Setup has completed successfully. And, When you computer restarts, Setup will continue. Everything seems to be OK up until this point.

I have the 15 second countdown and allow the machine to auto-reboot. Now here's the kicker. Normally at this point it boots to the Windows XP screen and Windows installation continues. However, in this case it boots back to the original white text on blue background Welcome to Setup screen where I'm back at square one to chose a partition, etc. Just like I had started over from power-down.

I know the CD is good because I have used it to install Windows on an identical IBM NetVista. (I purchased five licenses with this CD so I can do this legally.) And I'm pretty sure the machine is good since everything boots OK and I'm able to at least begin installing Windows XP. I just get into this endless loop after the initial phase of setup completes, and the machine auto-reboots...but back to the beginning, not to the next actual install phase.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Relztrah

[Rick]

I will suggest two things.
First go into the bios and set the boot order to Boot from the Hard drive first

If that doesn't help in this case
Remove the cd from the drive and allow the system to boot off the hard drive
When IF the install continues it will prompt you for the CD IF it is needed again

You may also want to disconnect the network cable till you finish the install and get it to boot.
Unless you are setting it up to boot from a server

[Sylvander]

Do you have hardware connected that had not yet been first manufactured when WinXP was produced [WinXP has no knowledge of it]?

Does this problem occur during the hardware initialization stage? [After the restart to initialize]

I'm extrapolating what I know about earlier versions of Windows to WinXP...
What may be happening is that WinXP finds that it doesn't have a driver for some item of hardware and is therefore unable to initialize that item and must restart and begin again to setup WinXP.
If you re-begin Setup, WinXP Setup will detect that there is an uncompleted installation and that a problem was experienced with an initialization, and that item of hardware will be auto-skipped.
This should be repeated for every hardware item that cannot be initialized.

[Relztrah]

Thank you for your observations. After setting the BIOS to boot from the HDD I got a lengthy error message which said, in effect, go no further. So I re-set the BIOS to boot from the CD drive and went through the whole routine again. However, this time when I got to the 15 second countdown to reboot, I pressed the button to eject the CD and voilà, the installation continued normally. So apparently at that point Setup was able to read files from the HDD. I was later prompted to insert the Windows CD which I did and completed the installation.

Now I have a different situation. When I boot, before Windows loads, I get:

Please select the operating system to start:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Professional


Use the up and down arrow keys...

So apparently the BIOS or whatever is seeing two different installations of Windows--no surprise after my repeated attempts--and giving me the option of selecting one or the other although they're identical. Is this the dual-boot option I've heard about? In any case I don't want it because I'm not going to be using this machine and the user will get confused by this message. How do I rid the machine of one installation so that Windows simply loads normally?

Thank you,
Relztrah

[Relztrah]

Out of curiosity I selected the second (bottom) listing and when I do I get the same error message I made reference to above:

Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check Windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.

If I do nothing after 25 seconds Windows boots from the first (top) listing and loads normally. Obviously the second listing is the one I want to delete.

[Rick]

One of the installs needs to be deleted
The problem is knowing the correct one on the hard drive

In the root directory you will find Boot.ini
If you edit that and remove the Non working selection
Then the system will boot correctly

Make note of the line in the boot.ini and it's pointer.
This will tell you where the faulty windows install is located
If in fact it is installed.

[Relztrah]

Rick,
Thanks for your reply. I'm not familiar with editing the boot.ini file, but I'm old enough that I remember DOS and how to use it. (I'm also old enough that I've forgotton most of that.) I imagine this is something I do from a command prompt, right? Should I boot from a floppy to an A: prompt and go from there? Please provide instructions.

Thanks again for your help.

Relztrah

[Sylvander]

1. You can use the "Notepad" text viewer/editor [within Windows] to view/edit the "C:\boot.ini" text file.
OR...
2. You could make a "WinNT/2000/XP boot floppy" [the "Emergency Boot CD" (EBCD) includes a program that makes such a floppy] holding generic copies of "boot.ini", "ntldr", "ntdetect.com", and [if necessary] edit that "boot.ini" file on any PC.
That boot floppy should get you into Windows.
You can [if necessary] experiment with that floppy [no need to mess with the files on your HDD], and if/when it gets you into Windows replace the HDD copies with the floppy copies.
This method works even when Windows won't boot, so it's good to practise using this.
OR...
3. Use the EBCD "File Manager" to browse the files on your C: partition, navigate to the "boot.ini" file, then view and/or edit the text content of the file [the "File Manager does that too].
The programs ["File Manager" in this case] on the EBCD can read both NTFS & FAT partition contents, but only write to FAT, not NTFS. [Unless the EBCD is modified/customized to include an NTFSDOS driver]
This method works even when Windows won't boot, so it's good to practise using this.

4. Here below is the content of the "boot.ini" file [matched to my PC] on a "WinNT/2000/XP boot floppy" made by me using the program [14th item on the 2nd menu] on the EBCD, on my PC which has only Win2000Pro installed.
Notice that the program automatically makes the "boot.ini" code correct to match the system as it finds it.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

a. How to make a free “Smart Boot Manager” floppy
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41498
This makes it easier to boot a chosen drive [particularly the one holding the EBCD].

b. How to make a free EBCD bootable CD
http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=41485
This has a number of useful utilities included including "Image" [for DOS, by Terabyte] & "File Manager".

[Relztrah]

I was able to download the files to create an EBCD but somehow in the process the burn of the image file didn't happen correctly. My CD has a file on it called EBCD.nrg, but it doesn't work like a boot CD. The IBM doesn't boot from it although the BIOS is set to boot first from the CD drive.

However I'm not about to give up on this very nice IBM machine, so I ordered what is called The Ultimate Emergency Boot CD from a fellow on eBay who has very good feedback and many satisfied customers. It has more tools and utilities on it than The Ultimate Emergency Swiss Army Knife, so I trust that with this boot CD I can diagnose and correct any the boot.ini file and perhaps any other problems with this IBM. I'll wait unil my boot CD arrives, fire up the IBM with the CD in the drive and post the results.

Until then thanks for your help with this complicated problem.
Relztrah

[Sylvander]

If you follow the procedure correctly...
When you run MAKEEBCD.EXE it should make a file named [something like] EBCD061P.ISO in the ebcd-0.6.1-pro folder.

It is then VERY IMPORTANT that you burn that iso file to a [rewritable (preferred) or recordable] CD using the correct software and the correct method for burning an iso IMAGE file to an optical disk.
[Do you know how to do that?]

That MUST be done correctly or the disk will not be bootable.
You cannot just burn the iso file to the CD; it must be burned as an IMAGE.

1. See snapshot 1 below showing the folder system as it shows on my EBCD.

2. See snapshot 2 showing the folders & files directly below the drive/disk.

I have an "Ultimate Boot CD" that isn't as useful as the EBCD.
I wonder that's the same as this "Ultimate Emergency Boot CD".

If you have trouble making the EBCD061P.ISO file, I could upload it to a hosting site for you to download here [it's easy to do, I've done it before].
But you've got to be able to burn the IMAGE to CD.

[Relztrah]

I think my problem was with the final step of the EBCD process when I got an error message:

Sorry, this Nero version can only be used with the recorder it has been bundled with.

In fact I was attempting to use it on another machine.

A separate question: Would there be any benefit in using the Recovery Console and running fixmbs or fixboot at this point? I am not familiar with either of these procedures so I'll need some coaching if in fact this will help.

[Sylvander]

"this Nero version can only be used with the recorder it has been bundled with"
There are free programs out there for burning images to optical disks.
One of the many [FREE] Terabyte utilities listed HERE (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html) is "BURNCDCC" which can do that.

"Would there be any benefit in using the Recovery Console and running fixmbr or fixboot at this point?"
I don't know, I've never used those, I've only ever used the EBCD utilities.
Paul Komski regularly explains the use of those; you could search for threads with his name and those terms.

[mjc]

A very full featured CD burning program is CDBurnerXP Pro (www.cdburnerxp.se/). I actually prefer it to Nero, except it doesn't have all the video/DVD capabilities...yet.

[rfds]

If you follow the procedure correctly...
When you run MAKEEBCD.EXE it should make a file named [something like] EBCD061P.ISO in the ebcd-0.6.1-pro folder.

It is then VERY IMPORTANT that you burn that iso file to a [rewritable (preferred) or recordable] CD using the correct software and the correct method for burning an iso IMAGE file to an optical disk.
[Do you know how to do that?]

That MUST be done correctly or the disk will not be bootable.
You cannot just burn the iso file to the CD; it must be burned as an IMAGE.

1. See snapshot 1 below showing the folder system as it shows on my EBCD.

2. See snapshot 2 showing the folders & files directly below the drive/disk.

I have an "Ultimate Boot CD" that isn't as useful as the EBCD.
I wonder that's the same as this "Ultimate Emergency Boot CD".

If you have trouble making the EBCD061P.ISO file, I could upload it to a hosting site for you to download here [it's easy to do, I've done it before].
But you've got to be able to burn the IMAGE to CD.

Hi Sylvander. I'd really appreciate a copy of the EBCD061P.ISO file. Every time I try to create the file using the makeebcd.exe file, I get an error in Step 4: Building Ramdisks... "Std library error: Failed to load." It's very frustrating.

Thanks in advance,

rfds.

[Sylvander]

Download it from HERE (http://www.verzend.be/v/3516618/EBCD061P.ISO.html) until 29th Jan 2007.

You'll need a fast connection or it'll take ages to download.