I turned on my laptop to find an error. The message recommended booting from the XP CDROM. I did this. During boot up it asked to press f6 etc, then it came up with PRESS F2 for automated system recovery (ASR). I pressed F2 and it asked for the System Recovery floppy - which I have not got nor do I know anything about it! I re-booted and this time ignored the 'Press F2..' and the process just halted. I then got bold. It was a hard drive with practically nothing much on it, so I booted from an old Win 98SE boot disc, performed FDISK and reformatted the new C partition. (Format c:/s). I then retried booting from the XP CDROM - but got exactly the same response - it won't go past the Press F2 screen. I have cleaned the CDROM and it is like a mirror, but to no avail. Any ideas? Cheers

Have you checked in the BIOS to see if the CD drive is the first boot device? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

"During boot up it asked to press f6 etc" The request to press F6 is for loading 3rd party drivers for hardware such as controller cards...just ignore it & the CD will continue to load. You can do your partitioning/formatting from the XP CD...there was no need to use a Win98 boot floppy.

jam, I don't see F6 mentioned?

OTH, that's cause it was a lowercase "f". :) Third line of the original post. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees. Still, doesn't sound like the OP hit F6 anyway. Doesn't sound like the BIOS is booting to the CD drive. evad, is the CD drive showing in the POST screens? Is is a removable drive?

If the OP is getting the "Press F2 for Automated Recovery" message, then it's gotta be booting from the CD and the CD drive already has to be set to be the first boot device. So you put the CD in, restart the computer, it goes through the POST, then says "Press any key to boot from the CD..." which, at that time you press a key. You get a blue screen where it says something like Press F6 to load SATA drivers, and then that changes to "Press F2 for Automated System Recovery (ASR)" and then hangs right there. Is that what happens? Ok a shot in the dark, but try this. Boot up with your Windows 98 Startup disk. Select to boot with CDROM support. After it boots to the prompt, ensure that your XP CD is in the CD drive. Type the following including the quotes and press enter: "X:\I386\WINNT.exe" Replace the X with the drive letter of your CDROM drive. This drive letter should be listed right before the A:\ prompt. WinSimple Software