Have A Problem That I Have Never Seen Before

[mouse]

Bought a used computer with a bunch of junk installed. Good machine, lots of RAM and the price was right. The shop where my friend bought it, is where I took it and I asked them to install my original Windows XP Professional, for which I provided the CD and key. I also asked that they put the whole computer in a new case that I also provided, add a DVD Drive and replace the CD RW drive. No sweat 1 day I was told.

When I got the computer back, the keyboard, mouse and headphones with mic did not work. No problem I thought. Drivers and get a USB Mouse and keyboard for now. Done! OK got that working!

At this point they kind of mentioned that the Windows XP that was on the machine could not be removed and that is why the installed the whole package again and the may have forgotten the drivers

So once the keyboard and Mouse worked I set about trying to remove the illegal version of Windows XP from the machine. Impossible! No matter what I did! Access denied! Format not accomplished due to the version of Windows already on the computer being more recent. I erased everything else. But the windows kept coming back and from where I do not know unless it is one of the directories that I seem cannot get access to no mater what I do.

Anyone have a clue?

If no advise by morniing, I will visit them again and ask that the either install the CD that I provide, after removing the illegal copy of Windows XP or provide me with a new Hard Disk with the system either installed from my Compact Disk or I can even do that myself.

If that fails, I will call my brother in Law at Microsoft and ask where they want the Hard Drive shipped to and wether they want the name and address of the dealership. I spent a lot of money to be legit and refuse to submit to being part of the problem.

[guardian]

Try to boot the computer from the DVD or CDRW drive with your original WinXP disk in it. You should be able to set up everything fresh and onto a completely formatted drive.

PS: If you don't know how to change boot sequences, you will have to press the "Delete" or "Del" whatever button you have on your keyboard right after starting the computer to get to options to change the sequences.

Hope this helps.

[Rice_King]

Ditto what Guardian says. Boot your PC with the XP install disk.

Prior to doing ANYTHING, review these procedures, Windows XP Installation, paying particular attention to Step 6. (You will want to delete all the partitions.) This should give you a clean drive with which to build your new OS on and without involving the brother-in-law.

[mouse]

Exactly what I thought, but, it boots into the old version of the C Drive never the less. Does not allow booting from the CD. Never saw a problem like this in my life. And I am not new to PC's. Little background: Owned a company in the early 90's that was one of the first ISP's in Europe with 7 POP's. Wrote many articles about Windows etc. So I am not a newbee! I have one more idea and that is to boot with the Hard Drive physically disconnected and then after booting connecting it again. We will see......if not it is off the the computer store for a new hard drive......bit extreme if you ask me but I can find no other way.

[pitrevie]

You can download a program from Microsoft that will create a set of boot up floppies for you.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/thankyou.aspx?familyId=55820edb-5039-4955-bcb7-4fed408ea73f&displayLang=en

However I think the previous advice should work in that you should look at the boot up sequence within your BIOS setup and move the CD to the first boot up position and then disable the other drives. Whenever I do a new install I delete any existing partitions and then create a new one which is then formatted selecting NTFS.

[monty]

Carefull Mouse,

IDE drives are not hot swappable, meaning you cannot connect or disconnect them when the PC is powered on! (unlike external USB equipment for example)

It would probably just hang the PC, and might possibly do damage to either the drive or the IDE controller on the main board...

The problem you describe does not have anything to do with windows, but with the way booting is handled by the mainboard.

Your PC is simply booting from the hard drive without looking if there is a bootable CD in the drive first. You should somehow get into the Bios, normally by pressing either F2 or the Delete button repeatedly right after powering on your PC. Then try to find the bootsequence, and change it so it'll look at the cd-rom, before checking the harddrive!

Normally most PC's are configured to check the cd first, but many people (including me) change this in the bios so it skips looking for a bootable CD, resulting in a faster boot sequence!

[Tywais]

I have one more idea and that is to boot with the Hard Drive physically disconnected and then after booting connecting it again.

I was going to sugget that also. Are you sure you have the BIOS set with the boot priorities as CD is first in order? There is nothing about the hard drive that would allow it to override the BIOS settings at boot time. Disconnect it (hard drive) and verify that you can even boot from the CD. There should be no reason to have to buy a new drive because of this symptom. You could also just disable the hard drive in the BIOS to verify that you can boot. I have had mainboards in the past that I had to disable the harddrive first and boot off the CD because it kept booting from the HD.

[Rice_King]

And I am not new to PC's. Little background: Owned a company in the early 90's that was one of the first ISP's in Europe with 7 POP's. Wrote many articles about Windows etc. So I am not a newbee!

I am certain that Mouse, with his background, is perfectly capable and knows how to get into the BIOS and make the CD drive the first bootable device! I am sure he attempted that several times prior to posting this thread.

[lopburi3]

Might you have to replace the new DVD drive with a normal CD drive until you get the system up?

[friend2]

If the CD is first in the boot sequense (in bios) and it refuses to boot, can be a bad CD

or a bad drive.

Try booting the CD on another computer, if that works = bad drive.

If that doesn't work = bad CD

[autonomous_unit]

If the problem is not bad hardware really a screwed up MBR or Windows OS on the hard disk, consider what I say below... if you install windows from a CD you'll notice that it reboots at some point in the process and starts using the hard disk. Therefore, it obviously has some logic to chain-boot the "new" hard disk image and continue the install. This logic might be confused by whatever state the hard drive currently is in?

Note: this is definitely destructive and will more or less make your disk look "like new from the factory": To force a reinstall, you could try booting a Linux install/rescue CD and using its fdisk command to delete the partitions or even better running "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda count=10" to completely zero out the first sectors on the disk, including MBR and partition table. Then install from the boot CD as for any new computer. If this fails, I'd suspect that there is some sort of "anti-virus lock" in the BIOS that is preventing write access to the partition table or MBR...

[mouse]

And I am not new to PC's. Little background: Owned a company in the early 90's that was one of the first ISP's in Europe with 7 POP's. Wrote many articles about Windows etc. So I am not a newbee!

I am certain that Mouse, with his background, is perfectly capable and knows how to get into the BIOS and make the CD drive the first bootable device! I am sure he attempted that several times prior to posting this thread.

Might you have to replace the new DVD drive with a normal CD drive until you get the system up?

I have both type of drives installed and get the same result from both

If the CD is first in the boot sequense (in bios) and it refuses to boot, can be a bad CD

or a bad drive.

Try booting the CD on another computer, if that works = bad drive.

If that doesn't work = bad CD

Works on another computer. also tried other Windows XP disk with the same result.

This is what I have done without success:

1.) Disabled Hard Drive in Bios using CD and DVD Drive as Boot Drive

2.) Tried to install after physically disabling Hard drive and then hooking back up when into the CD install program. Granted I risked here!

3.) Used both DVD and a second CD Drive in the computer to try to install new Windows

4.) Tested to make sure Install CD is good within another ocmputer

5.) Used another Install CD...just in case

6.) Changed also a program (never saw this) that is installed (hidden) assigning boot priority. This is in addition to the BIOS setup options.

7.) Tried to uninstall this program without sucess.

8.) Tried physically removing all parts of Operating program only it return

9.) Tried Format command

10.) tried Partition DOS commands

I think that I am best served by putting the problem into the lap of the Computer shop, who sold the initial machine and is guilty in my eyes.

My biggest fear is that these peopel are placing things into BIOS that is causing this. At that point I am lost!

I will keep you advised.......this is unique!

I have time for the new DELL monitor for it will not be here for another week.

[Gary A]

I went through the same thing. I finally got the machine to boot with the CD drive and got the message that the XP Pro version already on my machine was newer than the one on the disk. The computer shop had deleted my legal XP Pro and installed a pirate copy. I ended up going into Fdisk and destroying the partitions. I was then able to boot from the XP Pro CD and reinstall my original operating system. It then took forever to download all the updates but everything is now working fine.

[mouse]

I went through the same thing. I finally got the machine to boot with the CD drive and got the message that the XP Pro version already on my machine was newer than the one on the disk. The computer shop had deleted my legal XP Pro and installed a pirate copy. I ended up going into Fdisk and destroying the partitions. I was then able to boot from the XP Pro CD and reinstall my original operating system. It then took forever to download all the updates but everything is now working fine.

That is exactly what they did with me. In any case thanks everyone for your responses and helpful hints. My wife already took it down to the computer shop. I sent her cause she maintains her cool better and yells at them in a nice way usually getting much better results than me.

I will pass on the FDISK hint. Up to them now. They have until Monday, cause DELL just called and said that is when they are delivering the new Wide Screen Monitor. Thanks again all!

[friend2]

Offcourse now it's to late, but here's a great little utility that you put on a floppy.

It will allow you to boot CD's via the floppy.

Basically it's a bootloader redirecting to the CD drive.

Just set the bios to "floppy search" etc

It's in an "img" file format, so any app that can read that format and make diskettes will make it for you.

site: http://bootcd.narod.ru/index_e.htm

floppy image: http://bootcd.narod.ru/bcdl150z.zip

[mouse]

This is what I did to finally solve it all. Bought a second hard disk (needed anyway) and used it as the C: Drive and installed Windows XP Professional without a problem. Then through and some older partition management software was able to format the other drive and make that drive D:

Forgot to mention that the Windows XP Installation Disk had a problem giving me an error. So I used another one that I had available and used the KEY of the damaged CD. Worked and all is running now. The DELL Monitor arrived early, so this will be a late evening setting it all up properly, with Anti Virus Guard and a host of other protection before connecting it to the net. Then I need a lot of patience cause the kids will be playing during the evening and my wife will be learning how to use a computer. Seems like a good thing....I would rather pay her to help me than a stranger.

THANKS AGAIN ALL!

[gharknes]

something to consider

I have a memory card and reader which when plugged into USB looks like another drive, I have it loaded with MSDOS so it boots to a DOS prompt, this allows me to format/partition any way I want using DOS commands, very very handy

[Gary A]

I can always boot from my floppy drive BUT the 98 boot disk is FAT and will NOT format the NTFS hard drive. Using Fdisk and destroying the partitions is the only way I found that works.