Problems installing XP on a laptop.

  • Thread starter DQuaN
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DQuaN

DQuaN

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Hi all,

This is a bit of a long story so bear with me!

Last year I had an old laptop running XP Pro. This laptop had a dodgy fan that occasionally rattled. When the fan was rattling it didn't cool the CPU properly which would then overheat and the computer would just switch off. The cure to the rattle was usually a gentle rap with the knuckles on the underside of the laptop and it would run smooth again. Unfortunatley, one night after a few too many drinks I hit it a bit too hard and it stopped working.

The computer wouldn't boot so I tried a Windows repair and then a full reinstall. When reformatting the disk, it got to about 40% and then failed which led me to believe that I had broken the HDD. So for the past year this laptop has been sitting under my bed.

Two days ago my sister gave me her old laptop. I took the HDD out of it to see if it would fit in my one. It didn't. However, after putting my HDD back in I decided to give it another try. IT WORKED!! The disk formatted succesfully and started copying the windows files. I was installing from a burned disk, which when I created, came up with an error right at the end of the burn process. I used it anyway. While installing XP it came up with an error "could not copy xxx.file a few times. I chose to ignore and it got to the end and restarted.

After the restart it kept beeping and restarting, going round in circles. Occasionally it said "NTDETECT Failed" and occasionally it would say "Could not read from the disk, press ctl+alt+del to restart".

It would not boot from CD either, only floppy, so i tried using the XP Setup boot disks. I put the first one in and all seems well until I get a black screen for a couple of seconds and then I get an error " file \biosinfo.inf could not be loaded; error code 4096, cannot continue setup, press any key to exit.

I have now tried the win98 boot disk as advised by a friend, but i cannot select the D: drive in dos.

I think that the HDD should be working as it completed the reformat process with out any problems. It must have just come loose when I hit it.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
Ouch. So you had a bad format, then you had a bad burn to CD. Then you took that bad burn and installed it on a bad formatted HD. Did you have any problems with the CD-Rom drive prior to this? You need to run a disk utility program from the MFG of the Hard Drive to see if it's damaged. Based on the results of that test, you have a couple of options.
 
I wonder if i can run a disk utility program from floppy by booting into it. Know of any?

No problems with the CD drive at all.
 
What kind of drive is it? Go to the manufacturers site and download the disk utility for that particular drive. Usually it is a program you run from a floppy.
 
DQ
It would not boot from CD either, only floppy,
Click to expand...

Go into the laptop's BIOS and make sure the CD is in the boot drive order, and that it's ahead of the hard disk. The only {legitimate} reason the CD would not be bootable at all is that the machine is so old it won't support bootable CDs, in which case I wouldn't want to be running XP on it!!! :crazy:
 
The CD is first in the boot order that is the first thing I did. ;)

The PC does support boot from CD, that's how I started the install process initially, and installed XP on it a year or two ago.
 
I'm at home and the HDD is a Hitachi DK23AA-12. I have been on the website but they don't seem to offer any drivers as they say they are available on the operating system :grumpy: and I haven't seen any diagnostic tools yet.

If anyone else could find anything, i'd be really gratefull.
 
:) Running quick test now.


*edit*

It ran a few tests, then said "detecting DFT"

It is now at a command prompt within the program saying "A:\DFT\Unhadled exeption 000D at 00B7 224E ErrCode 7520" and has stopped. I'll run the full test now.

*edit2*
Advanced test ends up at the same prompt but without the error. I think its exiting to dos but keeping the same screen. If I hit return a few times it moves out of the program. Weird. :grumpy:

*edit3*
I've used a win98 boot disk and it has given me a command prompt for the cd drive. I typed setup.exe but it cannot be run in dos. If I restart the laptop i'll no longer have the cd drive. HELP!!!
 
Do you need to try and save any info on that hard drive? If not, from the same link provided above, do a low level format from using the other disk utility that you can download. Once complete, run the fitness test again.

If it's erroring out during the test, it doesn't sound good...
 
No, I've already had three failed formats and one successful format before I got to this point so there is definately no data on there to salvage. I'll have a look into a format boot disk.

Thanks again Pako. 👍
 
Man, with three failed attempts, there a good chance that the drive his hosed.
 
The three failed attempts were before i took the HDD out and put it back in again. Then the format worked perfectly which led me to believe that something had just come loose.


It's Late friday and i wanna go out and get drunk. I'll continue this in the morning (although not too early).

Not that you need it, but i'm giving you +rep for this Pako. Thanks man. 👍
 
You've probably figured it out by now though but... If you can boot from the CD-Drive, I'd suggest downloading Ultimate Boot Disc ISO, burn it to a CD-R, and run a disk utility from it to see if the drive is failing or has bad sectors.

A good low level format utility that I use is Darik's Boot and Nuke ISO, but you have to be extremely careful with it since it is a destructive format utility.
 
Matrixhasu77
You've probably figured it out by now though but... If you can boot from the CD-Drive, I'd suggest downloading Ultimate Boot Disc ISO, burn it to a CD-R, and run a disk utility from it to see if the drive is failing or has bad sectors.

A good low level format utility that I use is Darik's Boot and Nuke ISO, but you have to be extremely careful with it since it is a destructive format utility.
Click to expand...

Umm it's 5:20 am so i'll try to make as much sense as I can. As I think I mentioned earlier, I cannot currently boot from CD. If you know of a low level format that can boot from floppy, it would give me somewhere to go. :)
 
DQ
Umm it's 5:20 am so i'll try to make as much sense as I can. As I think I mentioned earlier, I cannot currently boot from CD. If you know of a low level format that can boot from floppy, it would give me somewhere to go. :)
Click to expand...

Sorry about that, I had read that you couldn't boot from a floppy but had assumed that since you said it supported booting from CD in a later post after the original and had fixed that issue.

Darik's Boot and Nuke has support for its format utility by floppy. It wipes all partitions and zeroes out a drive. That should help, I hope.

Good luck!
 
Look in your BIOS for a Hard disk diagnosis tool, if you have one run a full scan. If it suceeds you probably have somthing wrong with you're cd drive/cd. If it fails then you have a damaged hard disk.

If you're hard disk works OK I suggest using a Linux live CD (Ubuntu or Knoppix) to fiddle around with the computer. If its definately your Windows CD at fault (assuming you don't have another install disk) consider using Freespire as an OS, if it suits you keep it, if not buy/borrow another XP.
 
Matrixhasu77
Sorry about that, I had read that you couldn't boot from a floppy but had assumed that since you said it supported booting from CD in a later post after the original and had fixed that issue.

Darik's Boot and Nuke has support for its format utility by floppy. It wipes all partitions and zeroes out a drive. That should help, I hope.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

I'll give that a go, thanks.


Flame-returns
Look in your BIOS for a Hard disk diagnosis tool, if you have one run a full scan. If it suceeds you probably have somthing wrong with you're cd drive/cd. If it fails then you have a damaged hard disk.

If you're hard disk works OK I suggest using a Linux live CD (Ubuntu or Knoppix) to fiddle around with the computer. If its definately your Windows CD at fault (assuming you don't have another install disk) consider using Freespire as an OS, if it suits you keep it, if not buy/borrow another XP.
Click to expand...

I have a Good CD now and a Linux CD. I can't boot from either of them.
 
I tried all of the above, and i also copied the NTDETECT files to the hard disk. Nothing

I then used the XP Setup boot disks. It got to the point where it says "insert XP Pro CD and press Enter", i put the cd in, pressed enter, and it returns to the same message. It just doesn't seem to want to boot from the cd.

The laptop is an AJP Notebook 3100C. There is very little support for this so if anyone has any more suggestions, i'd love to hear them.
 
Can you boot from USB devices? Go into your BIOS to verify. If so, an external CD-ROM drive that you can hook up via USB might be your only saving grace here if your optical drive is hosed.
 
I'll give it a go. The strange thing is that the drive worked fine for the previous failed install.
 

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