The hard drive is not SATA, i have checked the boot order, but what is the proper order for windows setup? I will try the ram thing when i get home, that may actually make sense becasue i recently just added another stick of crucial ram. thanks sam

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To run setup you have to INITIALLY boot from the CD, so you want the cd drive before the hd in the boot order. As OtheHill said, don't hit any key after that. Let it reboot by itself, which it should do.

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I have the cdrom drive booting first. I let it reboot by itself, but it still starts over ?! sam

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You mean setup starts over from the beginning ? Does it ever get to the point where it asks you where to install XP-such as an already partitioned and formatted drive, or whether to delete a partition and format, etc. ?

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Yes, it gets to that point, i select my partition and it formats the drive, and copys the windows files. I then requests a reboot. I let it reboot and it starts over. I have tried taking the cd and leaving it in during the reboot. If i leave it in i get teh message invalid partition table sam

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Maybe you should run a check on the hard drive. You could download a diagnostic tool from the hd manufacturer. By the way, did you run the check on the RAM as suggested earlier ?

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The xp cd may be dirty or damaged and can't find the setup continuation. Try washing the cd with warm soapy water.

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Or a micro fiber cloth does wonders (its saved some ps2 disks that wouldnt reed last week) just remember to run from the inside to the outside of the cd in a line and not to heavy. oh a little condensation from your breath the cd works well to. ill second it could be the install is having to miss certain files due to the cd. but also have you triend reinstalling? or is this the first time which is causing the install--> reboot---> error / install agian? Chez

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Frequently (but not always) error messages re' can't copy this file or a series of files... are due to RAM flaking out in some way or other... Often there is a sugestion/message to the effect that the CD is possibly duff, famaged, etc. in some way; yet all the time it's RAM... Occasionally cleaning the lens on the optical drive may help/resolve the problem; but this is very rare; as is a faulty disk - unless clearly scratched etc...? The hard drive is not unknown (occasionally) to produce problems at the reboot stage - as essential files may be corrupt etc...; and for whatever reason it's often data/files at the start of the drive that appear to be thus affected...

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If your last operating system was Vista, that can cause the problem, but usually only if you select Quick NTFS format, or if you leave it like it is without formatting. You should do a full format instead of a quick one. It'll take awhile, but may be worth it. If you still have the same problem, you may have bad sectors on your hard disk. You may need to scan with a good disk diagnostic tool in that case. WinSimple Software

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"I decided to wipe out my OS partition and start fresh." What was your reason for doing that? Details please. .... The only time I have seen a bootable Windows CD boot without you pressing a key, other than when no hard drive is bootable yet, or after Setup has successfully completed a stage and you get the " rebooting in xx seconds " or similar message, is when the bios finds no bootable hard drive while booting for some other reason. Do you by any chance have more than one hard drive hooked up to this computer and at least one other one is not bootable? I've only seen this on one computer so far, that had two hard drives, both IDE, one bootable (made bootable by the first run of the Windows CD) and one not. In some bioses there is a list of hard drive models in Setup near the boot order settings somewhere if you have more than one (in others the hard drives may be listed as HDD 0, HDD 1, etc.) On this particular mboard, Intel brand D850MV, if the list of hard drive models has a non-bootable hard drive listed first, a Windows CD does exactly what you say yours is doing. The bios of this mboard will not try other drives in the list to see if they are bootable if the first one listed is not bootable. When you change the order of the hard drive models so the bootable drive is first, the Windows CD works as it's supposed to, starting the second session loading files from the CD normally, etc. ..... If that doesn't apply.... "...i select my partition and it formats the drive, and copys the windows files. I then requests a reboot. I let it reboot and it starts over." If you got no errors reading from the CD during the first run and you got the " rebooting in xx seconds " or similar message, indicating it got to the end of the first session, there's probably nothing wrong with the reading of the CD, the CD itself, the connection to the data cable it's connected to, the hard drive it partitioned and formatted and the connection to the data cable it's connected to, or reading the ram. "... i tried puting my HD ahead of my cdrom drive in the boot sequence, but then i get the error message "invalid partition table"." You should not get a "invalid partition table" error when you do that. The hard drive partition(s) and partition table of the drive you just partitioned and formatted should be fine, and the CD should boot into the second session of loading stuff from the CD at that point. That could be caused by - you have two drives, the bios is trying to boot the wrong one, and it's partition table is damaged, or the data cable connection to it is damaged, or the hard drive is defective. In any case... It is common to un-intentionally damage IDE data cables, especially while removing them - the 80 wire ones are more fragile. What usually happens is the cable is ripped at either edge and the wires there are either damaged or severed, often right at a connector or under it's cable clamp there, where it's hard to see - if a wire is severed but it's ends are touching, the connection is intermittant, rather than reliable. Another common thing is for the data cable to be separated from the connector contacts a bit after you have removed a cable - there should be no gap between the data cable and the connector - if there is press the cable against the connector to eliminate the gap. 80 wire data cables are also easily damaged at either edge if the cable is sharply creased at a fold in the cable. Try another data cable if in doubt. ....... Check your hard drive(s) with the manufacturer's diagnostics. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/... (thanks to Dan Penny for this link:) Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm... If you don't have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer's web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibilty, on another computer if you need to. ........... "... what is the proper order for windows setup?" It's no different for Windows Setup that it is for any bootable CD. The boot order that works best for most people, if you can set it that way (you can't in some older bioses), is floppy drive first if you have a floppy drive, CD (or optical) drive second, hard drive third. If your bios is recent enough that it can boot from a bootable USB connected drive it could be before (above)the floppy drive. If you can set it that way, you usually don't need to change it to suit different situations - it works for all bootable devices in the list (although if there is more than one hard drive listed the first one may have to be bootable, and if you have two or more optical drives the bios may only boot a bootable CD from the first drive listed in Setup). The CD drive does not have to be first (on top) as long as it before the hard drive. In all bioses I've tried it in, a bootable floppy is not recognized as bootable if CD drive is before (above) the floppy drive. Apparently in some newer bioses that doesn't apply but that seems to be rare. ......

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thanks for the help, but i am still stumped. The hard drive worked fine before i decided to reformat it so i dont think the hard drive is damaged. I took an older hard drive i had and hooked up up using that calbe and it booted fine, so i dont think it is the cable. I dont have two hard drives hooked up at the same time, either. i trie pulling out and moving around some ram, no luck. my boot order is cd rom, the hard drive, and i think that is correct. I have no idea what is going on? sam

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Oh and i tried another windows XP cd, it did the same thing sam

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Do you have more than one optical drive in this system?

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What are the differences between the older hard drive and the hard drive which is presumably causing the problem ? Is the new hard drive IDE ?

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If the computer boots fine with another IDE hard drive on the same connector on the same data cable, and if the drive you are having problems with is jumpered the same way (as master, or as master with slave present if that applies, or as cable select and the drive is on the connector on the end of the cable, and if the CD drive is on the same cable, it's jumpered as slave, or cable select and is connected to the middle connector (don't mix master/slave jumpering with cable select jumpering for 2 drives on the same IDE data cable), then the only thing left is there is something wrong with the drive.

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Yes i have two cd rom drives, one dvd player and oneplex writer cd burner. They are both fairly old. The newer hard drive is a maxtor diamond 10. This drive worked absolutely fine, for about a year, until i just tried to partition it. sam

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Did you do the full format as I suggested? WinSimple Software

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If you have a disk in the second CD drive that Might be causing the boot problem.

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I have been doing the full format. and my last operating system was windows Xp. There is no second cd in the other drive. This is a tough one sam

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Does anyone think updating my bios will help? sam

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Before doing that, I would do a full format(NTFS) of the new hard drive instead of a quick one, as Rayburn suggested. Let it delete any files that may be on there now.

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On further thought, delete all existing partitions and make a new one. Format it again using the full format. BTW, do you use products such as Partition Magic? WinSimple Software

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TEST THE HARD DRIVE!

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