Windows XP Install. Help Needed.

[Flimber]

Helping out a friend over the 'phone. I'll never learn...

Preface

PC is an "HP Pavillion 7934". Original install is FUBAR'd and the c: drive is now formatted ntfs. There's a system restore partition but I can't get it to do anything (pressing F10/F1 at bootup doesn't kick it into life, just prompts an "ntldr not found" message).

So I need to guide them through a fresh XP install. Booting an XP disk and installing always results in an error message "parameter incorrect. i386/asms" when all is seemingly well (after the machine reboots to finalise the installation). Looking online, some people have got around this by swapping out the cdrom, changing it's IDE channel, position on the cable or jumper settings. None of these are an option. So I need to bypass the CD for the install...

Problem

I want to boot up from a CD or a floppy, copy an XP CD to the HD and run the installation from there. Please, what is the most straightforward way of doing this ?

Cheers,
Mike.

[Oggie]

The easiest way would be to just boot directly from the Windows XP CD and install from there, is there any specific reason you want to copy the CD onto the HDD? Does your friend have another CD ROM drive he can try installing from?
Ooops sorry missed a part of your post (it is early)..
When installing for the CD are you allowing XP to carry out a full NTFS format first or are using FAT32?

There is some info on this problem here (http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=275422&page=6) which may be of use, I think now might be the time to give up trying to sort this out over the phone though ;)

[Flimber]

I NTFS'd it with a BART PE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) Boot CD, which is a mini-XP environment and uses XP's own files to do the formatting. When it was done, we created a folder on the drive ("XPCD"), swapped the BARTPE disk for an XPCD and tried to dump it in the folder. At this BARTPE goes non-responsive. Even tried doing it from a Command window with xcopy. Nothing happens. It looks like BARTPE wants it's own disk back when you want it to do anything. Other than that, it's a great bootdisk. Tried and trusted etc.

The problem isn't BARTPE at all. With the XP install, I've been selecting to "leave format intact". I could FAT32 it but the (apparent) CD error renders it all irrelevant as installation won't get past that reboot.

Even before all this formatting, with a poorly, sluggish XP installation already on c:, the 'asms' error was occuring. The copy-all-to-disk-first option seems to be the only way. I just need a solution which means I don't have to spend another four hours :doh: on the phone.

Mike.

[Flimber]

Anyone ?

[andrew1810]

You can install using floppy disks and the CD with this utility from microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8fe6868-6e4f-471c-b455-bd5afee126d8&DisplayLang=en

[Flimber]

I know Andrew but I can't use the CD ! That's the problem. The XP install process won't recognise it ! It's fine in DOS, it's fine when XP is up and running but it won't install from the CDROM (a Philips CDD4851). I can't run a firmware upgrade on it or talk the user/friend into anything remotely 'techy', I just need a bish-bosh-bash solution to sort it out.

Essentially, I need to make a local source of XP on an NTFS partition. And I need the simplest most foolproof way of doing it. Or a better method altogether.

Cheers,
Mike.

[andrew1810]

If you can put MS-DOS on the machine (possibly make a small partition for it), copy the i386 folder to the hard disk, then run winnt.exe which should start the setup program.

Instructions here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;307848 (it talks about CDrom drive, but if you copy the contents to the hard disk it should work)

[Flimber]

You're quite correct except you can't put msdos onto an ntfs partition from a standard floppy (in any straightforward way, that is). A standard floppy bootdisk won't recognise the drive.

I need to boot from a floppy or a CD then xcopy XP to the HD (which is ntfs) and then run a flawless installation.

I'm thinking that reformatting the drive to FAT32 would simplify everything and I'm currently looking at all the various bootdisks available online to find the most tiicketyboo one.

Still appreciate any help offered by anybody though...

[chachi]

simplest way would be to floppy boot to dos, run fdisk off the floppy and kill/remove the ntfs partition completely, then create a new Fat32 partition and attempt NT install locally post copying it all into a directory on the laptop