I Screwed Up Big

Ok, I installed XP Pro tonight...I did a clean install after formating my C drive which contained WinME. All was well till I had no ability to activate XP Professional. So, I decided to format and use the XP Corp edition.

Somewhere along the lines I figured to install a patched version of XP, see I have 8 in 1. All was fine, till a .bat file was missing or corrupt. I said sh*t and wanted to reformat and start clean with Corp.

OK, then the real bad stuff came for me. The day sucked, tell you later. A lowlight was that I had jury duty and my brother forgot to leave my car keys behind, so I had to take a $45 cab ride, just to have the selection get cancelled and then my computer crashed in ME so I just decided to throw in XP because the crash was major.

Oh well, anyway to make it worse, I put in my WinME Startup disk and that fu*ked up all hopes of formatting my C drive. Now I get an error where DOS says "Error loading OS". I went to make startup disks for XP Pro, but it was too late.

I am at a point where all I have is DOS in there and can't format the drive. I already removed the partition where NTFS was. What do I need to do to get my HDD to be 100% formatted so that my XP CD get recognized like earlier today so I can do a clean install of XP? Please help and don't worry, I will read, just have to sleep for a while...Thanks guys.

You could go to http://www.bootdisk.com and download the image for a Win98 bootdisk. After booting with it, you should be able to use Fdisk and Format (on the disk) to sort it out. There is also a new version of Fdisk on the site, for massive HDD's.

Sorry if I misunderstood and I've not been of any help! Good luck!

Dude i only had to install XP Pro 1 time, here's what i did, i was using Windows ME , i had a boot disk of course, so i formatted away the evil windoze ME, then i booted off of the Xp pro cd and installed it ,
i dont know how many versions of windows you have, but but you need to make up your mind on which to install. Upgrading an OS is got to be one of the easiest things a preson can do in computers.
I have Linux and XP pro on a dual boot, so if you think what your doing is hard well it aint .

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Upgrading an OS is got to be one of the easiest things a preson can do in computers.
I have Linux and XP pro on a dual boot, so if you think what your doing is hard well it aint .

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Let me explain something man, the upgrade was fine. You obviosly don't know what I am saying at all. I accidentaly put in the wrong startup disk and that fu*ked things up. I get an error now that says error starting operating system as a result of my mistake. If you don't have any constructive input to share, stay the fu*k out of my threads.

erm, if you have a Win ME startup disk, shouldn't that allow you to start up DOS from the diskette? then reformat the c drive. but that didn't work you say. hmm.

well, the downloaded win xp did you create a CD or what? if you did you should be able to boot from the CD, and do a reinstall from it.

keep us informed mobboss

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Originally posted by mobboss01@20 February 2003 - 09:15

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Upgrading an OS is got to be one of the easiest things a preson can do in computers.
I have Linux and XP pro on a dual boot, so if you think what your doing is hard well it aint .

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Let me explain something man, the upgrade was fine. You obviosly don't know what I am saying at all. I accidentaly put in the wrong startup disk and that fu*ked things up. I get an error now that says error starting operating system as a result of my mistake. If you don't have any constructive input to share, stay the fu*k out of my threads.

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No need to insult someone who is trying to help you. How is he supposed to know exactly what your problem is when all you did rant your frustration. Don't take it out on him that you were the idiot who screwed up your computer. When you're knee deep in sh*t and need help, the least you can do is be nice.

I just reformatted and did a clean install of XP yesterday. The XP disc I have isn't a bootable one but you can go to the Microshaft website and download the XP start up program. It's 1 file which you write to 6 floppy's and is basically just start up discs.

Once I did that the installation went fine.

Here's the link for the program -
XP Start Up Discs


And another good source of Info -
Good Advice

You can always plug your HD into another pc and format it there.

I had that problem a while back with Error Starting OS or sumthin like that. I think it means that there is something wrong with your Master Boot Record. I fixed it with XP home by going into the recovery console and telling it to 'fixmbr' and that fixed my problem. I don't know whether it'll fix yours tho :(

Also i think that when the computer fires up, you should first go into the BIOS setup and make sure you have the "Boot from Floppy" as first option, with the CD preferably as second option. This will allow you to boot from the floppy disk without the computer looking for the start sector on the HDD - which is corrupt - or a CD. Then you can use the boot disks as mentioned above to do an F-disk and reformat before doing a fresh install. Just remember to change it back when you have installed the OS.

Hope this helps Mobboss01.

Peace
UKMan

You should definetly format your hdd again first (with the win98 bootdisk). Make sure your boot sequence is right, first Floppy then CD-ROM then your harddrive. With this boot sequence it should recognize the winXP bootable cd if there's no diskette in the diskette drive.

I would be interested in the outcome of this Mobboss, a mate fu**ed up his ME XP dual boot system, tried reformatting with a win98 disk and lost a big chunk of his hard drive space as it couldn't see the NTFS partition. Returned the hard drive under warranty!!.

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No need to insult someone who is trying to help you. How is he supposed to know exactly what your problem is when all you did rant your frustration. Don't take it out on him that you were the idiot who screwed up your computer. When you're knee deep in sh*t and need help, the least you can do is be nice.

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Ok first of all, I didn't mean to be nasty, but with his statement, I felt insulted. I hope we can put that behind us. Of course, I consider many ppl on this board to be friends, but I suppose that under the stress of what happened, I may have overspoken. I am a firm believer in being fair, but the statement that he made gave me the impression that since he has Linux he is superior, and what I was doing was mere childs play.

Ok, the outcome was this...I wound up being able to boot from my CD by changing the boot config in BIOS (Thank God) which, in turn, allowed me to install XP Corp. I wasn't able to activate Pro, so I remembered to use the Corp XP and a Corp XP key to avoid being forced to activate the OS once in Windows with just the Pro edition. For the laptop, my files were gone and it all stemmed from a failure of Explorer loading. It told me to reformat the drive. I went to the web and there was suppossed to be a fix, but it didn't work. It all snowballed from there.

However, the upgrade was such a success I decided to reformat my HDD on my PC after creating a backup of my files, ie. music, video, and game data.

I used the XP Corp edition with the key after the reformat and was left with a clean install and fresh C drive. I have had no problems whatsoever since. My D drive was still in FAT32, so I installed partition magic and converted my D drive to NTFS. That was easy and a success. Now I am enjoying XP to the fullest on my laptop and PC.

COOL - well done bro ;)

Thanks UKMan and the rest that helped me cope and try new things throughout my tough time. I hope nothing like what happened to me happens to you.