i have an old compaq presario 5140 my sis gave to me and it was running windows xp but it was in pretty bad condition so i wiped the hard drive on my computer and reinstalled windows xp pro sp2 on it but now i cant get it to setup on the old computer... i have made the 6 boot disks required and tried those, they worked... but then i put in the windows xp pro sp2 cd in it, it would get as far as to copy the files...and when it restarts after copying the files it goes to a blank screen with a cursor and thats it. i took out the floppy like it said to before it restarted and everything... i think the setup was supposed to continue using the cd but it seems as though the cd isnt loading the setup. I would love some help i've been working on it for two days out of boredom and any advice would be great;y appreciated.

Hi-

It might be as simple as making sure that the BIOS is set to boot first from the CDROM before the hard drive. From your message you suggested that you reformatted the hard drive, so the old installation should be effectively "gone" - if not try using fdisk to delete the partition, then try to install XP from the CD.

Good luck...

well actually i reinstalled xp after i wiped it on my computer... also with the bios i have there isnt any way to change the boot order... i looked up a suggestion on the internet that said maybe i need to activate the cd drive with a certain floppy but all the floppies that were suggested were for windows 98 or lower

thanx for that advice anyways i appreciate it

Recheck the BIOS for the boot order....it should be there somewhere!

If the floppies worked then the HD has all ready been made active. If not then there would have been an error message on finding no HD.

Why not go to the manufacture's website and see what updates they have for the BIOS and also for the hardware drivers as well as graphic and the like!

On some newer machines you can select the boot device by hitting F8 during the POST when it says hit DEL to enter setup.

i rechecked the bios for boot order but its still not there. i went to the manufacturers website and the only update i could find was graphics updates... could that help?

no, that is not what you need

I happen to have had an old 5140 and it has a boot menu. It is in the setup option when you first start the computer use the F1 key i believe is what it was! Then read the set up screens for boot order or menu

Hi again,

Just so I'm clear - you can boot from floppy, right?

So if you boot using a Win98 install floppy, then you can exit to the DOS command line and use FDISK to delete any hard disk partitions. Then reboot and see if the machine will then try to boot from the CDROM (because there is no longer an active hard disk).

If not, then use the Win98 install floppy to boot to the DOS command line with CDROM support enabled. Try to find a file on the WinXP cd called "setup.exe" (or "install.exe" or something reasonably self-evident), and run that. With luck it will start the process. At least you will be able to find out if the CDROM is working (maybe it isn't?).

It is also possible that you will have to manually create a partition and format it via the DOS prompt, but I don't think that is required or even helpful.

Of course if you can't boot from floppy the above won't help!

I hope the XP-CDROM you have has not got some corrupted section. If possible try with some other disk.

ANother point i wanted to confirm is whether you have any OS on ur PC currently.