HD not recognized for XP install

[Boneless]

I'm trying to do a fresh XP sP1 install and when I put in a boot disk for formatting and fdisk, it says my primary drive is not recognized. I can hit F1 for retry or F2 for utility. I have a boot drive as master and a second drive and slave and 1 CD-RW and 1 DVD multi-burner. When I enter

a:\ format c:\

I get an invalid parameter. During fdisk, it reads the 120GB boot HD as 40GB. When I try to delete the partition, I get a runtime error. I essentially cannot format the boot HD. I disconnect the second HD before all this happens to eliminate conflicts. Any ideas what's screwing with the HD? It's a WD 120GBJB and the secondary is Maxtor 120GB 8MB cache.

[Gizmo]

Well for a start, XP doesn't use the fdisk command. You need to put the XP system disk into the CD-ROM drive where you can format and do a clean install, using the disk. No floppy diskette's are needed either.

[Confused]

XP CD is bootable and will do the format and partitioning for you. Just set your optical drive as first boot device in BIOS and go from there.
Chas

[EzyStvy]

And for what it's worth, the correct format command after booting off a floppy disk is:

A:\>Format C:

[Boneless]

I place my XP cd in and reboot and I nothing happens after power up, not even a splash screen. I do the same with my boot floppy and same deal. My boot order is 1) floopy 2) cd-rom 3) HD. I just want to format and re-install XP. Would using DVI instead of VGA interfere this?

[MaxRat]

your boot order should be 1) cd-rom, 2) hd.....that will get you where you want to go...

[Boneless]

What key do you hold down during bootup to enter BIOS?

[Boneless]

Ok, what I have now is my system HD is C with a small partition D, and my boot drive is E. How do I format all my drives and make my system and boot drive C? The only other thing I've done is upgrade my BIOS. I have XP installed on C and E but defaults to E at startup.

[glc]

If you don't mind wiping EVERYTHING out, just boot with the XP CD again and enter Setup - and delete all the partitions and make one new one.

[MaxRat]

First....you hit the delete key repeatedly during p.o.s.t.....

Second... to change the boot sequence you do this in Bios... what drive do you have windows installed on?

If your H/D is C: with a partition D: which either you install windows on make that your second boot order...IE 1) Floppy 2) H/D 3) cd-rom

the only time you should select the boot order of 1) cd-rom is when you are installing windows or checking the H/D with a anti-virus disk ( because you want this to boot before windows itself does) but, then when you're done you have to back into bios and reset the boot order back to the above order....htp's

[Boneless]

I really want to wipe everything and start from scratch. I have a CD-RW and DVD burner. When I try to boot with my XP cd in either, it ignores it and XP starts. I can't see the intro BIOS screen at all. All I get after the power switch is a blank screen until the XP welcome screen appears. Since I have XP installed on both HD, I can't even get the screen to select between the two like I used to. I tried to install XP by putting in the CD during windows, and doing the new install process, but can't format the C drive because of setup files on it and only the E Drive could be formatted. But when I did that, C became a system drive and E became a boot drive. I want C to be both system and boot, with E for data storage.

I did use Partition Magic on C before b/c it was split evenly at 60GB in two partitions. I changed it so C had most of the GB and D was minimal. Would that have any effect on this?

I recently just upgraded my BIOS to new one so that's not the problem. Also ran A norton diskcheck and no errors.

[Cricket]

Disconnect all but the hard drive you want to install WinXP to. Get Delpart and use it to delete all partitions on that hard drive. Then you'll have to enter BIOS (hit the Del key repeatedly after you turn on the computer and you'll eventually enter BIOS...if this isn't a name brand computer, they might use a different key to enter BIOS). Change the boot order so that the CD-ROM is the first device. Put the WinXP CD in the drive and Save and Exit the BIOS. The computer will reboot...watch the screen to see if it asks you to hit any key to boot to the CD-ROM drive (it shouldn't, but watch the screen anyway). The WinXP installer should start and just follow the on-screen instructions. Once WinXP is installed, reconnect your other hard drives and use Disk Management to set them up the way you want them.

Cricket

[Boneless]

Thanks for the advice. For some reason, I was able to boot into the WinXP disk and formatted my drive. Been about a week, so everythings good now.