Need help, can't install !!

[Copper]

Hello Folks.

Can anyone help with the following?

My brothers PC had a serious crash, and just wouldnÂ’t boot up, it would get as far as the SAFE MODE option and then just reboot again.

We ended up removing the hard drive, sticking it on my PC and reformatting then installing a fresh install of XP Pro.

We reinstalled the hard drive back into his machine, hoping it would just boot up into Windows, but no, itÂ’s just the same problem.

I have the six boot disks for XP pro, they go through all the motions okay right up to the Welcome to Set UP, to set up XP press enter: but when you try to install it says something about no “End User Licence Agreement (EULA)”

Why is it doing this when there is already a fresh install of XP Pro on this hard drive? Is there something setup in the BIOS that is stopping it?

The machine is a
Packard Bell I Media 5069
American Megatrends (Ambios) 8S1ML motherboard
256 Ram
1.6ghz P4

I would even install my old Win ME if I could remember the commands at the prompts??

Any help would be much appreciated
Copper

 

[chesman]

ok, well your boot sector on the drive may be scraped, or it may be some other problem i am not sure, But well the dos comands to install me?

hmm, ok get a boot disk, which can be obtained anywhere on the net, and then boot the system with the boot disk and the me cd in, and pick start up with cd-rom support, and then ocne to the prompt, just type setup, and it should run the setup files

 

[Copper]

Hi again.

Okay, I have tried swapping hard drives with my another machine, and it process that it nothing to do with the hard drive or the O/S on it, as it boots up fine in the other machine, and the other O/S wont boot up in the faulty machine.

When it first boot up it shows this -

And if you choose any of the options (except SAFE MODE then it just boots back into the above screen again.

If you choose SAFE MODE then it boots into this

and then restarts into the first picture again.

Anyone got any ideas ?

Thanks again
Copper.

 

[Apokalipse]

when you install XP, you have to install it on the computer you're using it on; it will install settings based on your hardware and moving it to another computer will make those settings obsolete.
also XP is designed to make you reactivate if you have too many hardware changes (from what I've heard)

 

[Copper]

Hi again.

Okay I have another wee twist to this problem, in trying to boot up into Windows.

In MS DOS I cannot get it to recognise C: it just says something like “unrecognisible drive”

Although in the BIOS it shows that the hard drive name and size etc.

Any ideas ?

Thanks again
Copper.

 

[Copper]

Hi MicroBell.

Yes it is a boot disk i used for DOS.

I thought i needed to be in DOS to use fdisk /mbr, but then again my knowledge is extremely limited on DOS.

Could you give me a walk through on how to use B]fdisk /mbr[/B] as i can't even access the command prompt.

Thanks again.

 

[Copper]

Hello.

Back again.

I have went into recovery via my six floppy disks, did all the business with fixboot no joy, so tried the fixmbr and still no joy.

Remember that the hard drive would boot up in another PC.

Is there anything else that could be causing it not to boot into Windows ?

Thanks again
Copper.

 

[Copper]

Anybody ?

thanks.

 

[mitschej]

A DOS bootdisk will not recognize an NTFS format. It is true that XP installed on a hard drive on one computer cannot be moved to another computer. Microsoft made sure of that so that you have to reinstall again. That takes one of your five hits off of the XP Disk. When you finish with your five times installing windows XP you have to buy the license all over again. Just anouther time that Bill can increase his net worth.