My New Build Problem

[Thrillparks]

Ok, I just put together my new build. I am trying to install windows xp. With the xp disk i have, i always had to install from inside windows 98 or me. I think its an upgrade cd. So on my new build I go to install 98 and it boots to dos and says it cannot detect a cd rom. I went ahead and partioned the hdd, but it still doesn't recognize the drive. I tried booting from the xp disk, but all I get at startup is a black screen with a white flashing dash. So can anyone tell me how am I going to get the os installed? (My system specs are listed in my sig)

[LeftyAce]

You may have to buy XP; XP home is about 89 dollars now, with an upgrade coupon for vista to boot!

And I'm not sure how legal installing 98 again to get the XP upgrade is.....sorry.....

[juppy]

First thing you need to decide is if the BIOS is even seeing your cd drive. Go into your BIOS and see if it's listed as one of the recognized devices (usually on the same page where your hard drive is listed). If it's not, you need to recheck your power and data connections to that drive. If everything's plugged in okay and it's still not seeing it, the drive may be bad. Is this a drive you've used previously or a new one that's never been tested in a system? EDIT: Just noticed your cd is a sata drive.....did you load the sata drivers already?

As to your "upgrade" cd of XP, are you sure it's an actual upgrade cd or did it come with a prebuilt system like a Dell, Compaq, etc? Because if it's from a prebuilt, it's not a full version and won't work to install on another computer. If it IS an actual XP upgrade, you don't need to install 98 at all. The XP upgrade is a full version just like the regular one is. Only difference is you have to have your 98 disk handy when it asks for the verification key from that disk. Otherwise Win 98 doesn't ever have to be installed for you to install XP from an upgrade cd (and it's better NOT to install 98 first anyway).

So, in the event you get the cd drive working, all you'll need to do is go into the BIOS and set the cd drive to be the first boot device (did you do that initially? Because otherwise it'll still try to boot from your hard drive, which in this case has nothing on it). Anyway, set the cd to be the first boot device, get the XP cd in the drive, save changes and exit from the BIOS and let it reboot. It should detect the XP cd and start the install procedure (format, install, etc).

[Thrillparks]

Yes the Bios detects the drive. I have it set to boot first. But you say that I need to load the drivers. How do I do that?

[Cricket]

GCDROM for DOS

Cricket

[glc]

No, you should not have to install any drivers. If the DVD drive is seen on the POST screen, it should boot the CD as long as the DVD drive is first in the boot order.

[juppy]

Do you by chance have a different drive (maybe just a plain ol' cdrom drive) that you can install and try instead, just to see if it's the drive itself. After looking through several reviews on Newegg, I found several that said they couldn't boot from their Lite-On DVD drive. A couple of the quotes below:

Could not install Windows from this drive. Would get BSOD when starting windows during install.

Skipping at cricical sector of the DVD. Could not use it as boot drive for system installation. I wasted two days in trying to figure oute the problem with installing Vista.It turned out that it was the drive. After changing to an Samsung IDE DVD R-RW, Vista booted up and installed fully.

Now, I know most of the time you have to take Newegg's reviews with a grain of salt so-to-speak, but from the amount of reviews I read, there were quite a few that were questioning the quality control of several different models of Lite-On DVD burners. Might be worth a shot to change it out with a different drive just to weed out the drive as the problem.

[glc]

SATA opticals supposedly eliminate the flaky booting issues with the IDE controllers on Intel 965-based boards.