Cant install Windows?!

[gianni21]

well first of all i dont really know what im doing... heres the story I purchased a new computer; a friend gave me a disk to erase the drive on reboot for the old computer ( for security purposes ) . well now everything is wiped clean and I cant install Windows XP Pro. I have gotten as far as to downloading boot essentials floppy after finally figuring out that I needed some sort of boot disk. From there on I dont know what else to do after inserting the floppy. My process so far is by trial and error but I have a feeling that is gonna get me in a deeper ditch. can someone please help I have aim,yahoo, and email pick one im desperate people i have been trying to fix this mess for days now:confused: :eek: :mad: :o :(

[juppy]

If you're just trying to reinstall Windows XP, you don't need a boot floppy.....the XP CD is bootable. Just go into your BIOS and set the first boot device to your CD drive. Put the XP CD in that drive, save the changes in your BIOS, and let it reboot. It'll give you the option of booting from the CD. Select that and follow the rest of the instructions that come up for installing it. The XP CD will format the drive and everything during the install.

[tigstah]

you do know how to get in the bios right.....

[gianni21]

yes after trying to get the computer up and running for days now I have learned what the bios are ... I have set up the bios to boot form cd first and I got a disk read error

[juppy]

Is there more than one optical drive in the system? What I'm getting at is, are you sure you've got the right drive selected in the bios to boot from and have the XP CD in that correct drive? I know that sounds stupid, but it's happened before. It's easily overlooked if you have more than one cd/dvd drive.

[gianni21]

ok NOW that you guys told me that i didnt need the boot floppys or whatever i went back to arrange the bios as cd, floppy, than hardrive. and made sure the cd was clean for somereason it worked now that i set them in that order..... because yes i only have one cd drive on that particular computer. I can now start breathing again without freaking out....now im formatting as i type thx guys :D

[juppy]

Glad you got it going. :)