Win XP- invalid boot diskette in drive a? help please

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disconnect the floppy drive and try your install again. Now you have this hard drive hooked up to a controller card? You should still be ok. Check in the bios and make sure that you are set to boot off the cd-rom drive
 
if all else fails, boot off a win98 bootdisk with cd-rom support. Makesure you have smartdrv.exe on a disk somewhere and copy it to c: drive, then run it. This will dramtically speed up the file copying process in the install. Now go to the cdrom drive and locate the \i386 folder and run the winnt.exe file form that folder. It will start up the install.
 
ok i tried disconnecting the floppy drive, the hard drive is plugged into the new controller card i had to get. the cd rom is at the top of the boot list. if i had a credit card i would download win 98 from bootdisk.com, but i dont. plus i already bought xp home ed, so even if 98 boots up how am i going to get to xp. maybe i should have bought a mac:)
 
savage said:
i recently put a new 40 gig hard drive in my cpu because my old 8.5 gig was'nt cuttin it anymore. when i did this i had to get a new controller card because the old one didnt support it. then when i tried to install my freshly bought copy of win Xp home Ed, all i get is a message saying "invalid boot diskette in drive a, insert boot diskette in drive a. i have the cd-rom drive setup as the default boot device, i just dont know if the rest of the setup is right. ive been trying to figure out this problem for a month know so if anyone can help id appreciate it. thank you.

boot from xp cd hit f6 and install your controller card with the floppy disc that should have came with it.
 
savage said:
ok i tried disconnecting the floppy drive, the hard drive is plugged into the new controller card i had to get. the cd rom is at the top of the boot list. if i had a credit card i would download win 98 from bootdisk.com, but i dont. plus i already bought xp home ed, so even if 98 boots up how am i going to get to xp. maybe i should have bought a mac:)

what do you need a credit card for? You only want the win98 bootdisk, not win98. If you follow my instructions above youll be sweet.
 
is there a hot key that makes the computer boot from cd? f6?
im using a mac to talk on this forum so making a 98 boot disk might be tough.
 
i have a new thought, when i bought my controller card it said it works up to pc133 motherboards and mine is a pc100, could there be a conflict there?
 
Its not the pc thats the problem, its the user. A MAC is more propietary than a PC not saying that its not the better choice.
No one really works on them. Just dont knock on something you dont know what your are doing with. Good luck bro.
 
seems like your pc worked until the controller card. take it out and see if you can boot from your a: and cd. if your xp boot disks won't boot then a 98 won't either. you should get a message that says press any key to boot from cd if you have a bootable cd in it. f6 is for drive controllers. you will see it at the bottom of screen on setup of xp. maybe there is a conflict with the card.
 
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