ringster Posted October 14, 2007 Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 I will try and be brief and clear...Yesterday I bought myself a new computer and in blissful ignorance accepted the fact that it was a "bare" machine. So i thought i'd be able to set it up myself but...First of all i partitoned the drive (FAT32) and then formatted the drive (This was done with the only boot disk that i had that seemed to be able to work - a floppy win 98se - subsequently, i am learning fast here, i checked the BIOS and saw the preferred disk was the floppy but i am jumping ahead here...)(i have in my possession a windows 98se boot disk floppy, a windows 98se cd and windows xp cd that i downloaded yesterday from microsoft.) I then put the boot disk in again and tried to set up Windows98 (with the aim of then upgrading 98 to XP once i had 98 up and running - although obviously i tried to run the XP disk directly but nothing was happening...)Windows failed to reboot after set up was completed - the problem is that the memory is too large (Windows failed to initiailze) because 98 only supports up to 512mb and my computer has more - the solution? go into system.ini via safe mode command prompt and change the MaxPhysPage but all i have in the system.ini is a blank blue page and no text!I am completely new to all of what i have written here and fully accept that i have probably not done some preliminary step which would have allowed me to boot windowsxp directly and now i have gone down a windows98 cul-de-sac... so my question is, How can i step back from the 98 debacle and boot windowsxp? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted October 14, 2007 Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 Personally I am not an expert, but I cannot understand for the life of me why you wanted to install W 98 then upgrade to XP. Why didn't you install XP from the word go? No doubt, one of the experts will be able to help more, but I would be surprised if they were not as mystified as me, as to your motives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ringster Posted October 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 Personally I am not an expert, but I cannot understand for the life of me why you wanted to install W 98 then upgrade to XP. Why didn't you install XP from the word go? No doubt, one of the experts will be able to help more, but I would be surprised if they were not as mystified as me, as to your motives.Ah! If only i knew why! (the reason was that i was having trouble getting the xp cd read, thinking of this as a side step around that problem, i met this problem... now i understand the main problem with the initial xp installation was the cd itself.... say no more...But anyway i have just resolved it all i think... the attempt to be 'clever' didn't work, unsurprisingly, and so i have since repartioned the hard drive and will start from scratch One question lingers, do i have to prepare and format the drive or should the windows OS do it for me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rong Posted October 14, 2007 Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 The CD with XP should do it for you, you will need to set the first boot to CD in the bias. If your XP is an upgrade you do not need to install 98 first, just have the CD ready when it's asked for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ringster Posted October 14, 2007 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 The CD with XP should do it for you, you will need to set the first boot to CD in the bias. If your XP is an upgrade you do not need to install 98 first, just have the CD ready when it's asked for.Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted October 14, 2007 Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 Personally I am not an expert, but I cannot understand for the life of me why you wanted to install W 98 then upgrade to XP. Why didn't you install XP from the word go? No doubt, one of the experts will be able to help more, but I would be surprised if they were not as mystified as me, as to your motives.Ah! If only i knew why! (the reason was that i was having trouble getting the xp cd read, thinking of this as a side step around that problem, i met this problem... now i understand the main problem with the initial xp installation was the cd itself.... say no more...But anyway i have just resolved it all i think... the attempt to be 'clever' didn't work, unsurprisingly, and so i have since repartioned the hard drive and will start from scratch One question lingers, do i have to prepare and format the drive or should the windows OS do it for me?If the CD is anything like my full instalation CD, you will be offered the chance to format. Choose NTFS. :D Try here for help. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan2273 Posted October 14, 2007 Report Share Posted October 14, 2007 Something does not add up here, how did you download the XP OS from Microsoft?.For future reference do as Rong says and set the CD to first boot in the BIOS and then put the XP CD in and follow the instructions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted October 16, 2007 Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 Something does not add up here, how did you download the XP OS from Microsoft?I was thinking the same thing. Make sure that you use a legitimate Windows install disk, not a pirated one. Can you show us from where you downloaded your Windows installation? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted October 16, 2007 Report Share Posted October 16, 2007 Something does not add up here, how did you download the XP OS from Microsoft?I was thinking the same thing. Make sure that you use a legitimate Windows install disk, not a pirated one. Can you show us from where you downloaded your Windows installation?I have just searched for this myself and cannot find anywhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnotherAlan Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 ...<snip>...For future reference do as Rong says and set the CD to first boot in the BIOS and then put the XP CD in and follow the instructions.Does this mean that any genuine XP installation disc ought to be bootable? The one I've got isn't (unless I've missed something - I set the BIOS to boot first from CDROM but it won't work). The only way I can get setup to run is by booting to Windows (98) and then clicking on setup in the CDROM.So maybe I've got a duff disc? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 Something does not add up here, how did you download the XP OS from Microsoft?.Can you please give us the source from which you downloaded this XP disk ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb Posted October 22, 2007 Report Share Posted October 22, 2007 Does this mean that any genuine XP installation disc ought to be bootable? The one I've got isn't (unless I've missed something - I set the BIOS to boot first from CDROM but it won't work). The only way I can get setup to run is by booting to Windows (98) and then clicking on setup in the CDROM.So maybe I've got a duff disc?Not necessarily; some OEM Windows disks (e.g. from Dell) are not bootable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted October 22, 2007 Report Share Posted October 22, 2007 Does this mean that any genuine XP installation disc ought to be bootable? The one I've got isn't (unless I've missed something - I set the BIOS to boot first from CDROM but it won't work). The only way I can get setup to run is by booting to Windows (98) and then clicking on setup in the CDROM.So maybe I've got a duff disc?Not necessarily; some OEM Windows disks (e.g. from Dell) are not bootable.Yet another good reason for NOT buying from such company's. Use your local small computer builder and have EXACTLY what you want from him/her. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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