Ok i have a big of a problem, ok well a major problem. My computer has been screwy for a while so i finally got around to trying to fix it and get it up-to-date. I have a gateway desktop model 1700 i believe. Anyway one day both cdrom's just stopped worked, the cdr and cdrw, i opened her up and changed jumper settings cleaned everything off with compressed air etc and got the dvd player to work but the NEC cdr that came with the gateway just doesn't want to work, the light keeps blinking. (if your wondering wtf this has to do with windows not booting i'll get to that) Ok so i wanted to install SP2 on my computer so i proceeded to do so and upon reboot the computer wouldn't load into windows XP, no error message or anything it just kept rebooting itself. I would catch a quick glimps of a blue screen that said "image something.dll may be currupt" than said something else. I did some research and i read that some computers with the older intel processor (which im sure this has) need a bios update. So i made a bios update disk but herein lies the problem. MY computer for some reason won't recognize the floppy or cdrom, checked the bios and they are there, i even rearranged how the computer boots, still nothing. I even put the bios update on a cd, nothing. I than put a gateway recovery cd in, didn't do anything. I than put a windows XP cd in to try to use the repair tool, nothing. I can't boot into safe mode, or safe mode with command line and i can't use "last best known configuration" it doesn't do anything but reboot. I am going to go nuts if my HD is fried. How can i fix this? Thanks in advance gurus

This may apply not sure as I have never seen a Intel p3 1.7ghz CPU...

Hello. Early Prescott PIV processors and some motherboards had problems with SP2 not booting. You may need BIOS updates. Please just do a search for SP2 and Prescotts thru MS searchable knowledgebase articles and you are sure to find some articles for not booting problems. But your problem may also be due to some other hardware/driver issues. Regards suatcini

Have seen another person have problems after blowing out the computer. Seems better to vacuum it out. May be better to install SP2 after a clean install of XP. Get Your PC Ready for Windows XP SP2

I may have made a mistake i believe its a p4 but it is a 1.7gz. I did all the reading on the older intel processors that do not respond to SP2 w/o a bios update and that doesn't help me right now because i can't even get into windows to delete SP2 and upgrade the bios, i can't even boot off the floppy the bios update or the cdrom. I was thinking of things i could do and i came up with this. I just bought a segate 160gb hd that i threw into an external enclosure, its already formatted and has stuff on it i was wondering if took that HD out of the enclosure threw it into the computer and tried to install XP on that, put my original now currupt primary as a slave and deleted SP2 once everything worked ok. Would this work or would windows xp try to delete the files i presently have just put on my new HD? Thanks.

I opened up the computer and saw that the damn floppy's power cable was disconnected, plugged it back in and bam it worked, unfortunately putting the bios update setup disk in did not, so now i am venturing off to create windows XP boot disks that will let me use the CD-rom drive since i don't think my cdrom drive is bootable. This is the article i am reading now but i do not know which one to chose: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310994/ Since i just installed SP2 should i download those boot disk files? Or because my cd is older should i d/l the original release? Thanks.

You have to download the Diskette Set applicable to the original installed O/S. All XP Geniune CD's are bootable providing the CD drive as first boot device is a BIOS selection.