Cant Reformat PC

[Seraphim]

So Im trying to reformat my friends comp...he has XPpro installed. I look in his bios and it is already setup to boot from cdrom. When the screen comes up to "press any button to boot from cd" I press **** and nothing happens.

[citizen-k]

1. do you have a cd in the cd-rom?
2. is that cd is bootable?
3. you can create a boot diskette in case your cd is not bootable

[American Patriot]

Asking for computer assistance is akin to asking for directions (if you are a man.)

[Seraphim]

1. do you have a cd in the cd-rom?
2. is that cd is bootable?
3. you can create a boot diskette in case your cd is not bootable

Tried 2 seperate discs

[Seraphim]

Asking for computer assistance is akin to asking for directions (if you are a man.)

Yeah because you gotta be a man to be a computer geek :roll:

[citizen-k]

So Im trying to reformat my friends comp...he has XPpro installed. I look in his bios and it is already setup to boot from cdrom. When the screen comes up to "press any button to boot from cd" I press **** and nothing happens.

"I press ****" as "I press shift", "I don't press at all" or "I press the **** out of my keyboard"?

Try press something other then shift :lol:

Then try to create a boot diskette - hopefully it will boot from the floppy.

(why are they called "floppy"? they are not floppy for the past 15 years or so... :cantbeli: )

[Seraphim]

**** as in **** as in all the damn buttons. p-)

[n4292936]

If on boot-up it actually says "press any key to boot from CD" then the disc is bootable and the problem lies elsewhere, or the executable on the CD that is supposed to kick in is screwed. If the problem lies elsewhere it is probably related to to your input ie the keyboard. I assume you've checked the cord and have gone into Bios to double check the boot order. You may also be able to try not listing the hard disk in the boot order, thereby forcing it to boot from CD by default.

[mocking_loudly_died]

1. Press on
2. Bellow a war cry
3. Kick the **** out of it
4. Blame your respective deity for current woes
5. Go postal

[Freibier]

Pull out the HDD and format it in your comp if boot from CD fails.

[snake]

Uninstall Nortons and Nortons go back if you have it

It can cause many problems

My 2 cents

Good Luck
snake

[2Sheds_Jackson]

When you say "nothing happens"...exactly what does that mean?

Does the PC spin the CD and attempt to read it, but it will not boot?

Or does in not even attempt to read the CD?

If no attempt is made to read/spin the CD, could be it's not sensing your keyboard input. If the CD is trying to read - is the CD clean/OK? Will the drive read other CDs?

Your CD disk can be hosed in a number of ways, depending upon where it may be dirty or damaged. If the boot portion is not readable, it ain't gonna boot...but you could still do a standard install using a bootable floppy (assuming the rest of the disk is OK)

[Ballistic]

Find a Win98 bootdisk.

Load it up with the bootdisk and select the choice with CDROM support.

Go to the CDROM drive.

Find the directory "\I386"

Now I cant remember for sure, but the executable to run is either:

"NTSD.exe" or
"WINNT.exe"

(I think its WINNT)

You can then run Windows XP setup. Be aware, that doing it this way can take well over an hour, possibly 2 hours (or more). But it does get it installed and you can do all the formatting and partition functions just like normal. See how you go !

You will need a Windows 98 bootdisk for this to work. If you need one, check out www.Bootdisk.com. They have them downloadable there.

[Jack Mehoff]

Check your keyboard. Are you sure your keyboard is plug in?

[Jack Mehoff]

Asking for computer assistance is akin to asking for directions (if you are a man.)

Yeah because you gotta be a man to be a computer geek :roll:

Hey now, computer geeks are real men.

[citizen-k]

Asking for computer assistance is akin to asking for directions (if you are a man.)

Yeah because you gotta be a man to be a computer geek :roll:

Hey now, computer geeks are real men.

http://www.stroda.com/images/DanRooseFace1Small.jpg

[Seraphim]

Tried it when Norton wasnt even installed, installed and scan for virus and adware and spyware....cant remember but he has hundreds of crap.

I cant remember if the cd spun or not. He has two cd drives and we tried both of them. I'll try only enabling the cdrom as the bootup next time. Thanks for all your imputs.

[Viktor_s]

You say you are trying to reformat, My guess is that you already formatted the hard-drive and now performing a clean install?

In the bios you can set the priority in booting (shift to Boot from CD-ROM as a priority)

Secondly if you haven't already done so, you may need to have a CD-ROM driver for that, as someone suggesed create a boot disk (from any XPPro machine, as drivers are bog standard.

Finally, check that CD-ROM (or DVD-ROM) is on different IDE channel, i.e. not on the same wire, maybe to boot from CD-ROM it requirs it to be master not the slave drive.

[Seraphim]

Nothing happening oh well...

[Seraphim]

Got it working...its the evil USB