Hi guys. Recently i purchased a new hard drive because the old one on my laptop burned out. (Both 60gig) I put the new hard drive into the laptop and have a burned version of XP Pro to do the install. The CD copies over all the files needed for the setup and runs some scans on my system, everything is fine. Its a new drive so I do the partition thing after a full format. It then counts down to a reboot before the setup stars. It reboots and then does the same exact steps it did before. Asking if i wanted to format, partition etc. Then reboots and goes back to the same thing. If i pop the XP disc out inbetween reboots to see if it will boot off of the hard drive without the XP cd, it says "Operating system not found" and does nothing. I know the drive is working because I can see the files that The XP CD has copied over to it before the setup. Is it possible that the burned CD is the cause of the setup not working? If it was because of the CD wouldn't it have not worked at all? All help is appreciated. I'm desperate here.

Buy a licensed copy and it should work fine.

lol that_end_down ... lol buy a licensed copy right goahead give M$ an other billion dollars they really need it Y do ordinary people cares about giving M$ another billion ! whats the matter with you do u really think Microsft cares about u .. c'mon ... go ahead and pay for it if u want .. i would never understand the world .

Just a guess, but try going into the BIOS and using the default settings. If that doesn't work, try setting the hard drive (HDD) detection to "Auto." Check boot order too. Should be Floppy, CD, HDD.