If you mean when you put the CD in and booted from it why you couldn't format, it's because there was an OS on your HD. You would have had to given it a command to format the HD from a command prompt. -Clint
God Bless Us All Clint Hamilton, Owner Want to exchange links with us? http://OrpheusComputing.com � ----- Original Message ----- From: "John F" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Ok Ben, I decided to try the first bit of your advice ie format. I booted up with the CD in and got to the options of boot up from CD. However it carried on to install so I went along with it. THe install has cured my problems so I am happy. However can you say how I did not get into format. Did I miss something or not do something. THanks again John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Well, you could start over and format and reinstall everything one more > time. It would be good practice and it doesn't sound like you've put very > many other things into this install.. On the reboot during the install you > just leave it alone it will boot in the right place. I think it suggests you > remove the cd just before the reboot. > > If you want to try to fix what you have, go to the start menu in WinXP and > click on Help. Search for recovery console. Read and maybe print out the > instructions for using it. Pay special attention to the copy command > because that's what you will use. It's pretty easy and it will let you get > back to where you started if things get messed up. You can get to the > recovery console by booting from the cd. > > Next, open explorer to C:\ and find boot.ini. Make a copy of it someplace > you can find it later if you need it. Maybe make a new folder in C:\ to save > the copy to. Write down the location. The command you will use if you need > it will be something like "copy C:\(new folder)\boot.ini C:\" > > Then, right click on My computer choose properties. In properties go to the > advanced tab and click on Startup and recovery settings. On this page > you'll see a drop down box at the top of the page that lists your start up > options. See if you can figure out which is windows and which is windo. > The windows one should be selected. Click on edit and you will see the file > boot.ini open in notepad . You will see which OS is the default which > should be windows and then the other. Delete the line for the other windo > and save and close the file. Don't delete anything else. Your default os > will be listed twice, once as default=, and once as a line that looks like: > > multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP > Professional" /fastdetect > > The line you are deleting will look something like: > > multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDO="Microsoft Windows XP > Professional" /fastdetect > > Close all that stuff and reboot and see if you are ok and if it boots > directly into WinXP. If it won't boot then you use the recovery console to > put the original boot.ini file back. If it does boot, then you can delete > the windo folder. > > There may be some extraneous files in your system. I've never installed > WinXP twice on the same drive so I don't know but they shouldn't be a > problem. > > Ben Moore ============= PCWorks Mailing List ================= Don't see your post? Check our posting guidelines & make sure you've followed proper posting procedures, http://pcworkers.com/rules.htm Contact list owner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Unsubscribing and other changes: http://pcworkers.com =====================================================
