Unable to boot to XP CD

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sethmo

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Nov 10, 2002
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I have an older Dell Dimension 4100 with a corupt registry(corrupt \windows\system32\config\system) and I cant get it to boot to a Windows XP Home SP2 cd. In the BIOS, the boot priority is set to 1. ATAPI-CDROM 2. IDE-HD. When I have the XP Home SP2 cd in the drive and turn the PC on, it goes from the Post screen to a black screen, then directly to the Windows startup menu screen(safe mode, ect).

The weird thing is, is that it will boot to an ERD Commander disc no problem. I tried doing a system restore from ERD Commander, but it gives the same error message.

I am using a brand new 52x cdrom as a master on IDE2 and the hard drive is master on IDE1. I have tried a known working XP Home SP2 cd and an XP Pro SP2 disc(both are CDs and not DVDs). Any suggestions?
 
Because your supposed to press any key to enter windows setup. It's probably hid behind the splash screen.

Reboot the system with the xp disc in and just keep pressing space bar and see what happens.
 
Well I press escape on the splash screen and it shows the post. It does the ram count, detects IDEs, then goes to the black screen for a few seconds, then tries to go into Windows. I press space bar constantly during the splash screen and during the black screen, but still doesnt go.
 
sethmo said:
Well I press escape on the splash screen and it shows the post. It does the ram count, detects IDEs, then goes to the black screen for a few seconds, then tries to go into Windows. I press space bar constantly during the splash screen and during the black screen, but still doesnt go.
Click to expand...
Well what I was thinking is, the message where it says "Press any key to enter windows setup" was being hiden.

Try the XP disc in another system to make sure the media isn't bad.

Another thing you could try is, get the system to fail to boot, with a floppy or something, then cd to your optical drive and manually start the setup. Its like setup.exe in the i386 folder (I think).
 
I tried booting to a Win98 floppy boot disc with cdrom support, but the setup cannot be run from MS-DOS mode.

And both Windows CDs boot fine in other desktops.
 
So it ended up being the media, nothing wrong with the discs, this machine just wouldnt boot to them. This is a Dell DImension 4100 and the XP discs I had were both Dell OEM that I have used in hundreds of other Dell machines, but this machine would not boot to them for whatever reason. I threw in a retail XP Pro cd and it booted to it just fine. Gah I have spent too much time on this one.
 
You can't run XP's setup.exe from Dos but you can go to the i386 folder on the CD and run winnt.exe. You will want to load smart drive (smartdrv.exe) if you have it on the dos floppy or be prepared for a very very long install time from dos.

oops sorry missed that very last post of yours. :(
 
Hey no problem, thats a good thing to know though. I will remember that for next time I am in a jam.
 
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