Ok. I'm about to loose it here and need some serious help. I've been lurking for a while - just never posted. Dilema: I need to (new) install Win XP on a blank, newly fdisked/formatted Compaq cpu. I have the 6 XP boot disks and attempted to boot my system with the 1st disk. Why don't I just boot from the cd, you may ask? Well, b/c I formatted the drive and my system doesn't recognize the cd drive. Ok... I booted from the 1st disk and I keep getting "Disk i/o error". No matter what I do. Odd thing is: 1) I JUST did this for another one of my computers and it worked fine! (Exact same process) 2) There's nothing wrong with my “a: drive.” 3) Floppies "read" fine, even on the computer which can't boot from the first floppy, it just won’t boot with 1st disk of the set. And yes, I’ve tried other disks. I even downloaded the program from Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=55820edb-5039-4955-bcb7-4fed408ea73f&displaylang=en to recreate the 6 xp boot disks and THEY don’t work either! I've read a few messages with problems like my own and no one has offered any suggestions that seem to work for me. I’ve heard that it could be the master boot record and to use fdisk/mbr. I’ve tried checking my boot sector with DOS anti virus boot disks. I’ve checked my BIOS to see what the boot sequence is and I’ve changed it various times. UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…Any suggestions?

Try the installation via a '98 startup disk FDISK, Format, boot from the '98 boot diskette...start with cdrom support and then with your XP cd in the optical drive; change directory to the I386 folder and run winnt.exe NOT winnt32.exe and follow the setup prompts.

If your BIOS has a boot from CD option then it will boot from CD whatever state you hard drive is in. The BIOS is not O/S dependent. Also look at: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;307848

Look pal, you need xp installed to use those floppies. If that's not the case, try the XP Pro SP1's boot disks. I did get this error by trying just XP Pro disks, but didn't work. And i tried the ones that are XP Pro SP1, and it worked. Remember, it's XP Pro SP1's boot floppies. There are 6 of them.You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=83f53be9-28fa-40e8-8ec2-631504ef5e26&displaylang=en