Turdmania Urgent Help Needed

im taking it out the E drive the CDRW one (its knackered) so the thing will stretch.

just take out the nackered one, and on the good one, just take out all the master slave black things, your pc will automatically set it as master if there isn't any other hard disc connected, then reinstall windows

*wipes brow*

Its searched for the boot record from CDROM and its not finding it? Is that wrong? It should shouldnt it?

its now stuck on floppy.

woooa....

right.

once you start unplugging CDroms - we could get into difficulty.

AS LONG AS the 40gb HD is on the had disk cable (IDE 0) thats the main thing. have atleast 1 working CD rom on the 2nd channel (ID1)

then, make sure the BIOS is set to boot to the CD rom. IF it says 'searching for boot record' and the cd rom sounds like it's spinning - it's doing the right thing. MAKE SURE you've got a proper copy of XP in there, it should say 'Press any key to boot from CD'

it's different jumper settings for different brands/types of hard disks.

are you sure you gone in the bios and told it to boot from cd? it should recognise straight away and say press any key to start setup or something like that.

hmm, tried it again, searching for boot record on CDROM..OK

its just sitting now, surely it should lead me into the XP install menu?

I have one working CD rom, the other is knackered, I dont need it connected.

The BIOS was set to boot from the CD as the second option, so it is doing that, the CD was spinning, now it has said searching for boot record from CDROM...OK, nothing else has happened.

Flashing cursor.

I have a corporate copy of XP, no hooky shit

yeah but if there isn't any other hard disk in it will jsut use the one thats there as master. at least then she can install windows

hhmm.... try the other CDrom in it's place - just to see if u can use that 1 to boot

er this is what it is saying.

Im now in the AMIBIOS SETUP ADVANCED SETUP

Quick boot enabled
1st boot device IDE-0
2nd Boot device CDROM
3rd Boot devide Floppy
Try other boot devices Yes.

Is that ok?

it did say boot ok, now its not.

so I should try the other CDdrive, even though it doesnt work???

thats fine for the CDROM - however - there's no HD listed - you're 40gb should be connected.

it might be PHYSICALLY connected - but it might not show up if the jumpers aren't set right

its not detecting any hard drive are you sure you've conneted it up right?

ok mebbies not then

I have it connected thusly -

my IDE cable has been removed from the 13.6GB drive, the CDRW drive that does not work, and the 40GB drive. I have set the pin to Master if ATA blah blah.

I reconnected the 40GB drive on the end of the cable, which used to be where the 13.6GB drive was.

I have now set the BIOS to Boot from IDE0, then CD ROM, then floppy.

Do i need to change the pin you think then?

your hard drive is ide not ata put the jumper just on master

but i've booted windows befoe without jumpers in, i fear theres another problem.

are the hard drives making noise? are they on?

i cant fit the jumper thing back on now???

it doesnt look like its on properly?

use a jumper from the unused CRDOM if u have to.

Just have the basic setup.

IDE0 (hard disk cable) - 40gb with jumper set to MASTER
IDE1 (CDROM Cable) - 1 cdrom with jumper set to MASTER.

Then, in the BIOS it should read:

Primary Master : (hard disk name)
Primary Slave : not detected
Secondary Master : (cd rom name)
Secondary Slave : not detected


THEN try and boot to the CD

maybe plugging the power in would help