Can't Reinstall, won't boot from cd, no floppy 2

[Happo]

I have a system which needs a total wipe and reinstall of xp pro. No floppy drive installed. Two physical hard drives, 40Gb which is split in two for system / user files and a 120Gb Music Drive. I wish to reformat all of 40Gb drive and reinstall xp with partitions as before. It is important that I delete all the existing data from this drive. Problem: Despite going through the bios about 20 times i cannot get the system to boot from a cd at all. It (the cd-rom drive) is listed correctly and listed first in boot order but nothing happens, it just boots the existing installation. Ideas?
Thank you.
Daniel.

 

[Happo]

I ended up doing a total reformat, reinstall. System is still not well though, takes about 30 mins to boot. Have read and investigated the relevant MSKB XP slow booting articles and no help. Won't boot at all w/usb mouse. Clean boots in 35 seconds, where do i go from here?
Daniel.

 

[linney]

Are there any errors in the Device Manager or Event Viewer?
Run MsInfo32 from Start Run and see if you have any problems listed in that.

What other USB devices are attached, perhaps if you removed them to see if it boots? Do you have updated drivers for each device?

Is the Bios up to date or can you try setting it to Safe Defaults? Since your reinstall have you done all your Windows updates?

310353 - How to Perform a Clean Boot in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310353&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

316434 - HOW TO: Perform Advanced Clean-Boot Troubleshooting in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;316434&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

310560 - How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310560&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

Try your luck in the Hardware forum too.

 

[aquias]

Okay, for my own edification, where are you hanging for with the 30 minute boot at? Is this sitting and staring at the Windows XP splash screen or is this during the login process?

I'm only asking because you say a clean boot takes aprox. 35 seconds vs the 30 minute boot you're seeing.

My first thought with this, is that something seems to be wrong with the settings that you're importing, a BIOS issue, or the format didn't take out the trouble causing sectors.

Have you done a firmware upgrade for your BIOS? Now, I see how you formatted the drive, via the XP CD. Did that resolve the issue of you being able to boot from disk? If so, and as another last resort, you may want to look into booting with a 98 boot disk and using FDISK prior to format and installation. This will clear out the FAT table for this hard drive and give a "cleaner" installation.

 

[Happo]

linney, I have removed everything usb, what I have not done yet is physically removed the extra usb card installed, will do so tonight.

aquias, the boot hangs during the pre-login xp loading screen with the "progress bar", if you can call it that. The progress bar stops, screen goes black, comes back to life 20-30 mins later displaying the login screen.

(Quote)aquias: My first thought with this, is that something seems to be wrong with the settings that you're importing

I should probably have mentioned, this is my fourth reinstall in two weeks, there is something very wrong with the settings saved from the old setup. First two reinstallations went haywire, (very technical term, i know), as soon as I imported the old settings, I did not experience this booting issue though. This is a friend's comp and I don't have a great deal of time to mess around with it so a reinstall was easier for me than a lengthy diagnose and fix. Upon the next reinstallation, this booting problem started so just to make sure I deleted, recreated partitions and installed AGAIN, only to have the same issue. At this point the new installation is totally raw, nothing else installed, nothing touched or changed.

What I can't understand is nothing has changed, same hardware, same windows version, it was running sp2 before which I haven't applied yet because I can't imagine it helping the current problem.

The boot from disk issue is resolved, I disconnected everything except the hard drive I want to install to and the cd drive and set them both to master on diffrent channels. Then disabled booting from anything but the cd drive in bios, as Frank4d suggested above, and voila, can boot from cd. If I plug anything else in ie secondary hdd as slave, no boot from cd, work that out!

I will try upgrading the bios as this system is 3 years old, however, as I said earlier, it worked before but I suppose computers can be a little inconsistent at times (understatement of the century?)

Thanks for all your help,
Daniel.

 

[linney]

Even though you haven't installed SP2 and perhaps it shouldn't make a difference on the other hand it just might.

Without SP2, what level of Service Pack (if any) are you at? SP1 had a lot of large hard drive and USB fixes included in it. These are the sort of things Service Packs may include.

Consider this too, very often Windows Updates offers recommended updates depending on software and hardware installed and probably would not be included in the SP2 general release. So it is possible you are missing something which may be relevant to your machine.

When you install Windows and when you install Service Packs, log files are created in C/ Windows which if read can often (well, sometimes) throw a bit more light on a particular problem.

And before you flash the Bios do try it with the Safe Defaults settings, you never know your luck!

 

[Happo]

Linney, thanks, fyi the install was sp1a.

Ok, the system is still not 'right' but a lot better. I started installing apps last night since it always boots, it just takes a while. Now, it is booting like this - about 10% of the time it boots normally, about 15% of start-ups it hangs eternally, about 75% I have the 20 min wait.
I have reinstalled most of my apps and applied sp2 and all is fine, in fact good and a lot quicker than it was before, I guess he (the owner) can just leave it on.
Lastly, I have removed the extra usb card as I believe it was causing problems. The top two usb ports (connected to m/b) don't work either, system freezes if anything is plugged in, but I think I have a fair chance of solving this considering the number of hits google just produced for usb issues... shall investigate and post 'final' good news asap.
Daniel.