Stuck on inputting product key

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

When you get the Command Prompt (from F10 or Shift+F10), what do you see? Where is the current location? (The path displayed before the > mark)

What shows when you type the DIR command? (I don't need the details)

[wilson]

When I start up the computer,

it goes to the normal windows xp home start up screen,

then says on a blue screen,

Setup Is being restarted,

gets to the windows xp installation guide,

starts up,

but cannot get to putting product key in as I have the xp pro disk in, not home disk in.

It comes up with:

"fatal error"

"an error has been encounered that prevents setup from continuing.

Setup failed to install the product catalogs. This is a fatal error.

The setup log files should containt more information.

Press OK to view the setup log file."

But,

I think that is only as I have the windows xp professional disk in.

It's just additional information I thought could help.

[wilson]

When you get the Command Prompt (from F10 or Shift+F10), what do you see? Where is the current location? (The path displayed before the > mark)

What shows when you type the DIR command? (I don't need the details)

In the CMD I type,

C:\ /q

It comes up with

Invalid Drive specification.

[MANEMAN]

Would I just be best to do the previous thing by downloading the boot disk?

Yep ! :) :) :)

The C: drive is usually the drive which the primary operating system is mounted on.

However. - In your case, with more than one owner, and a little bit of messiness with various installs we can only guess at what is going on, - how many partitions the drive has, or how the drive/partition which the operating system is installed on has been re-named. (C: D: S: Y: etc; etc.)

Primarily what you would be trying to achieve is to wipe the whole drive clean of all partitions and data, and make a clean start.

I think we have pretty well established by now that some sort of massacre has occured on this computer, and nothing much is to be lost by wiping the hard disk clean (Formatting) and starting afresh.

One disk, one partition, (Formatted NTFS), one operating system.

Carry on Mitch. Your anger has subsided, and you are on a learning curve high. ;)

John.

[wilson]

Would I just be best to do the previous thing by downloading the boot disk?

Yep ! :) :) :)

The C: drive is usually the drive which the primary operating system is mounted on.

However. - In your case, with more than one owner, and a little bit of messiness with various installs we can only guess at what is going on, - how many partitions the drive has, or how the drive/partition which the operating system is installed on has been re-named. (C: D: S: Y: etc; etc.)

Primarily what you would be trying to achieve is to wipe the whole drive clean of all partitions and data, and make a clean start.

I think we have pretty well established by now that some sort of massacre has occured on this computer, and nothing much is to be lost by wiping the hard disk clean (Formatting) and starting afresh.

One disk, one partition, (Formatted NTFS), one operating system.

Carry on Mitch. Your anger has subsided, and you are on a learning curve high. ;)

John.

I will be starting the procedure in roughly one hour or so,

and will post my outcome :)

Thank you John for your help.

It Has been very much appreciated.

[wilson]

Would I just be best to do the previous thing by downloading the boot disk?

Yep ! :) :) :)

The C: drive is usually the drive which the primary operating system is mounted on.

However. - In your case, with more than one owner, and a little bit of messiness with various installs we can only guess at what is going on, - how many partitions the drive has, or how the drive/partition which the operating system is installed on has been re-named. (C: D: S: Y: etc; etc.)

Primarily what you would be trying to achieve is to wipe the whole drive clean of all partitions and data, and make a clean start.

I think we have pretty well established by now that some sort of massacre has occured on this computer, and nothing much is to be lost by wiping the hard disk clean (Formatting) and starting afresh.

One disk, one partition, (Formatted NTFS), one operating system.

Carry on Mitch. Your anger has subsided, and you are on a learning curve high. ;)

John.

Ok,

now I am really stuck.....And I am somewhat....Flabbergasted...

I have done the disc.

I formatted the harddrive, I knew it was the harddrive as it was 103 gb :)

Yay im learning :)

Once I had done that,

I restarted the computer with the windows xp disk in the disc drive,

Once it loaded it came up with a black screen with white writing

Saying

" NTLDR is missing

Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

I press CTRL+ALT+DEL

And it restarts,

And comes up with the exactly the same thing......John....Im hoping you can help....

[AlanHo]

This error message indicates that the computer is trying to boot from a non bootable source such as a blank hard drive or corrupted bootable CD.

Are you sure that the BIOS is set to boot from the CD drive? - you would get this message if the computer was trying to boot from the hard drive without an operating system installed.

If it is booting from the CD - is your CD an original Microsoft disc or is it a copy? If a copy - it could be faulty.

[wilson]

This error message indicates that the computer is trying to boot from a non bootable source such as a blank hard drive or corrupted bootable CD.

Are you sure that the BIOS is set to boot from the CD drive? - you would get this message if the computer was trying to boot from the hard drive without an operating system installed.

If it is booting from the CD - is your CD an original Microsoft disc or is it a copy? If a copy - it could be faulty.

It may be a copy

[MANEMAN]

AAhh! - Now maybe we are getting to the nitty-gritty of the problem.

Alan has very probably hit the nail right on the head, and this could explain why you have had so much trouble.

Firstly try to clean the installation CD, and make sure there are no scratches on it. A drop of Fairy Liquid rubbed over it under the cold tap, well rinsed off and dried with a very soft towel will do the trick.

If it still will not install, I'm afraid that you will just have to accept that you have a corrupt installation disk, and go get y'self another one. :(

(I have also had this happen (NTLDR Missing) when clean installing XP, and it has turned out that the Hard Disk has bad sectors. - So also be thinking along the lines of a new Hard disk. (Worst case scenario. )

On the upside, - you may have a nice clean disk all ready for a clean install, and you have learnt a heck of a lot.

Clean the installation CD.- Or try to borrow a "Known Good" installation CD, - If then it is still failing to load, start thinking that you may have a bad Hard disk.

John.