having trouble booting from CD, help !

[shappo]

Hi everyone,
I have decided to completely dump and reformat the hard drive on my laptop, because the laptop wasn't running as fast as it should. Using Fdisk on an old boot disk (floppy) i had, I sucessfully deleted partitions and made another, ready to install windows on. This is where the problem started. I restarted the computer, with the windows XP cd in the drive, and when the computer started up I expected to see the press any key to boot from CD prompt, but it never came. I then went into bios and checked that the CD was set first in line to boot from, no worries there. Tried again, with no prompt, just a message saying "no operating system found". So at this point I thought, no worries, I will use the old way of setting up and use the 6 XP installation disks to start installation, however, on the fourth disk it said that the flppydsk file was corrupt and I could not continue installation. I am now stuck and have no idea what to do next. Any help would be much appreciated, I am fairly new to using dos and command prompt and all that, so a fairly simple explantion / instructions would be much appreciated ! lol.

In case the specs of the laptop are usefull, here goes:

model: HP NX9000
processor: 2400 mhz
RAM: 768 MB
HDD: 60 GB
DRIVE: LG DVD/CD-RW

thanks guys ! shappo.

[shappo]

Hi guys, one thing that I forgot to mention is that the dvd/cd - rw drive is not the original one that I got with the computer, the old one had an issues so I put this new one in. Thanks, Shappo.

[chrisling]

Originally Posted by shappo

Hi everyone,
I have decided to completely dump and reformat the hard drive on my laptop, because the laptop wasn't running as fast as it should.

This is definitely a bad decision...Reformat won't solve sluggish perormance, only upgrades do. However if you experience any event that your computer become sluggish suddenly, it could be malware infection. It's fairly dangerous to reformat a infected machine...

Hi guys, one thing that I forgot to mention is that the dvd/cd - rw drive is not the original one that I got with the computer, the old one had an issues so I put this new one in.

Was that mean now you have two CD ROMs? You have to set a primary CD ROM for your computer.

[shappo]

Hi,
just letting you know that I now have an OS installed on the laptop, I got Around it by using the dreaded floppys. However I still would like to know how to make it boot from CD, for future. How do I set up a primary CD drive, like you were saying ? thanks, Shappo.

[chrisling]

Let's say if you have two running CD ROMs (DVD/CD ROMs whichever), you have to go to BIOS, CD ROM part, and choose a primary CD ROM. I can't determine the exactly way for you, different motherboard have different design of BIOS.

For your case, it seems you set to boot from CD ROM; but if your primary CD ROM is not the one which you set it up as first boot during system boot up, it might not work and will just boot directly to other source. *Sorry sounds confusing...

[shappo]

Hi,
I am a little confused by what you are saying about 2 CD rom drives, there is only 1 drive installed, it is only a laptop, there is not room for 2. I probably didn't make that real clear in mt initial post. Sorry my bad. I replaced the original drive with another of the same type: DVD / CD RW, so there is only 1 drive installed in the laptop. And the bios is set to primary CD, so what you are saying is that in bios there is a way to tell it which drive to boot from, like the model, brand, etc ? thanks and sorry about not being real clear. Shappo

[chrisling]

I see...Yes I thought you have two CD ROMs...I'm out of idea about this, it sounds strange since your BIOS supports CD ROM boot up but it can't boot your CD in your case. Did you try other bootable CD? For example Bart's PA bootable CD?

[shappo]

hi,

I tried a couple of cd's with no sucess, I might download that barts bootable cd and see what happens. If not it doesn't really matter, the computer is running really well now and I am hoping that I don't ever have to dump the computer again because its a pain in the ass ! thanks a lot for replying to my posts, its much appreciated. cheers.

[chrisling]

Thanks for your patience. I might not help you much actually. Good luck.