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I cleared my hard drive now I get A: How do I boot XP? DOS?

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:19 am
by bluebootxp
I cleared my hard drive, now I get A: How do I boot XP? With DOS? Will this give me C: ?

In other words, now that I have a wiped hard drive what menu part of Ultimate Boot CD do I go to too load Windows XP from the Windows XP installation CD?

Is it DOS or FreeDOS or something?

Thank's in Advance

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 9:34 am
by as702
How did you wipe the XP partition? You'd only be able to natively access the volume provided it was formatted as FAT16/32. However, you shouldn't need UBCD if all you want is to re-install XP; simply insert your XP installation CD into your CD/DVD-drive and boot.

Edit: I suspect what you want is a CD that boots into a live XP environment. If that's the case, you may want to look at UBCD4Win (google it).

What is it you're trying to do?

PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, check cable.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 11:25 am
by as702
Just to trying the debate into the open...
bluebootxp wrote:I tried putting in the XP CD and after the press any key it says: PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, check cable...
It sounds like your BIOS may be attempting to boot via network. Do you receive any other messages past this? If you can, access your BIOS settings and change the boot order so that your CD drive is placed at a higher priority.

Try this, then get back to me.

PXE-E61 Media Test failure, check cable.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:19 pm
by bluebootxp
Argon PXE Boot Agent v2.00
Pre-boot eXecution Environment

PXE-E61 Media Test failure, check cable.

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key

I go to the bios and the boot devices are:

1st Boot Device [CD/DVD: MATSHITADVD]
2nd Boot Device [SATA: WDC WDI200BEV]
3rd Boot Device [Network: PXE UNDI CB]

I select the CD/DVD just in case it might bring attention to it as the 1st device in case it's overlooked or something and then it comes back saying: PXE-E61 Media Test failure, check cable.

...and again it goes:

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key

PXE-E61 Media Test failure, check cable.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:21 pm
by bluebootxp
Argon PXE Boot Agent v2.00
Pre-boot eXecution Environment

PXE-E61 Media Test failure, check cable.

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key

I go to the bios and the boot devices are:

1st Boot Device [CD/DVD: MATSHITADVD]
2nd Boot Device [SATA: WDC WDI200BEV]
3rd Boot Device [Network: PXE UNDI CB]

I select the CD/DVD just in case it might bring attention to it as the 1st device in case it's overlooked or something and then it comes back saying: PXE-E61 Media Test failure, check cable.

...and again it goes:

Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in Selected Boot device and press a key

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:25 pm
by as702
Can you still boot other CDs from the drive or is it just the XP disc?

I can boot the Ultimate Boot CD from it.

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 12:59 pm
by bluebootxp
I can boot the Ultimate Boot CD from it.

I tried another XP Installation CD and it still says same

Posted: Wed Sep 17, 2008 1:06 pm
by bluebootxp
I tried another XP Installation CD and it still says the same thing though

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:19 am
by as702
This is bizarre. Irrespective of how your hard disk is formatted, the Windows XP installation CD should boot regardless; the fact that UBCD manages to boot makes the problem all the more confusing.

Are you sure your installation CD is genuine or hasn't been damaged in any way? Can you test the CD on another machine?

Both the XP CD's boot in other computers

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:09 am
by bluebootxp
Both the XP CD's boot in other computers, I think this might be because they have the NTFS on the test computer already.

I'm thinking I might have to get a Windows 98 CD and load that first because of the DOS FAT or FAT32 file system and once that is installed then I will have a working windows environment to run the XP setup.exe from and then format upgrade to NTFS when asked during the installation.

Could you go over the steps to get the dosntfs command going from ramdisk Q: and then CD/D: .....[change directory to the rom drive letter, maybe D: and then run setup from that environment....or something.]

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:33 am
by as702
Okay, try this...

Boot into DOS using UBCD
Format the hard drive using FAT32 (Ranish Partition Manager can do this)
Once complete, insert your XP installation CD and copy the I386 folder to your hard drive.

Code: Select all

md c:\i386
cd t:\i386
copy *.* c:\i386
Then, change directory to your installation source...

Code: Select all

c:
cd i386
winnt.exe
That should get you going.

Ranish Partition Manager

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:15 am
by bluebootxp
I can't find Ranish Partition Manager in the menu. Is it in:

Installation Tools
Diagnostic Tools
Device Management Tools
Wiping Tools
Cloning Tools
...or
Low-Level Editing Tools

Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 8:50 am
by as702
Should be under Partitioning Tools. Contained within there exist plenty of alternatives in order to format your drive (FDISK, XDISK, GParted etc).