Hi, I'm helping a friend with an older PC. She has expensive embroidery software that will not run on Vista so she asked me to upgrade her PC from 98se to XP Pro. I've tried all boot sequences and cannot get it to recognize the cdrom. I've changed bios settings and still no luck. It is an origional XP install CD she went out and bought. Does anyone have any ideas on how I can get this PC to boot up from cdrom....(which is working fine.) I tried 2 other HD's also and still no luck. She is on a time frame with orders and that's why I don't have time to order a new XP PC on-line, all they sell in the stores down here is the dreaded Vista Thanks Some HELP in posting on Cnet plus free progs and instructions Glad to Help!

When you say the CDrom works do you mean it will read the WinXP CD when booted into Win98se? If the above is true then I would assume the CD drive shows up in the POST screens at startup? If that is the case and you have placed the CD drive before the HDrive in the boot order you may not be tapping any key when prompted. Or are you not getting a prompt from the CD? If getting a prompt but the KBoard is not responsive you may be using a USB KBoard. A little help on what IS happening and what exactly you are doing, step by step would be helpful.

Does it have a floppy drive? If it does download this program called (smart boot manager) it goes on a floppy disk,then reboot and you will be offered to boot from floppy / CD-rom / hard drive.. it works great..

>>If the above is true then I would assume the CD drive shows up in the POST screens at startup?<< Yes it shows up and there is no prompt to boot from CD when rebooted, I am not using any USB keyboards or mouse. Thanks for the reply. Ghostman 1, I will try the floppy and see if that works. Can you guide me through making this floppy? I've googled and didn't find anything that really had any good insight to it Thanks Some HELP in posting on Cnet plus free progs and instructions Glad to Help!

You may not have a bootable CD. Try booting to a known bootable CD of any kind, just to verify the drive is working or not.

Here's how to do it: Start the computer with your chosen (floppy) boot disk. Change to the cdrom drive. Go into the \i386 directory on the cdrom. Run WINNT.exe to begin the install process. The above was copied from Dr. D's web site.

aegis, is that the instructions on making a smartbootmanager disc? Some HELP in posting on Cnet plus free progs and instructions Glad to Help!