Microsoft Windows XP Pro installation problem - PLEASE HELP!

[dystopianutopia]

Hi guys, I'm new to the forum, I just signed up now for support with my problem and I hope to contribute in the future.

OK, so basically recently I accidently formatted my HDD, this got me majorly worried because I thought I might have lost all my data, but that wasn't an issue because I plugged in into an external case on another PC and used recovery software to retrieve the data . I thought because my PC has had some problems recently and was running a little slower (even after defrag) I thought I'd do a fresh Windows install.

But anyway, cutting to the chase, I put my HDD back in my PC and put my Windows XP Pro CD in and booted off CD. I then formatted my drive (safe in the knowledge that my data was on another machine) and copied the installation files. Now obviously at this point I would boot off of the main HDD and run the Windows installer, but it's not quite that simple anymore When I turn it on, it loads up, and when it tries to boot off of the HDD to load the Windows XP Installer, it comes up with the error message:

Invalid BOOT.INI file
Booting from C:\Windows
NT Detect failed

I'm not really sure what to do, and I see no reason why it shouldn't work, because the Windows Disk had just copied all the files it needed to load the Windows Installer. And I can confirm the drive is still in working order because it still works fine in my laptop on the external HDD case.

So, any ideas guys? PLEASE help, I really appreciate it.

Thanks.

[davids2004]

I would try to do another clean install again. Perhaps it had a hiccup and missed installing a file.

[Statica]

Try zero filling the hard drive before a reinstall : http://www.dban.org/
If it still doesn't work, or if you want to simply troubleshoot and move ahead try: http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=k...30184&x=7&y=16