We exchanged many PMs early this morning. I'm 95% sure the problem is that his CD-R copy of XP is a non-bootable CD. I told him to install 98 and then to upgrade* to Windows XP from inside 98.

* there is no real upgrade path from 98 to XP so it would really be closer to a full install.

 

My CD-R of XP was bootable
Of course it was also the enterprise edition....

 

experience with building pc's: little to none. this is my first full build.

everything is BIOS is set and seems to be functioning. the boot order has been changed to read the cd-rom first (since i have no floppy drive).

all wires are connected properly and are in place.

i'm using the40/80 pin connector jeffbrig.

My CD-R is a copy of XP PRO. i dont understand why it wont boot from here. i've placed other discs in the drive and it reads them no problem. is my copy of XP PRO non bootable??? i put it in another pc with XP home installed and it read it no problem.

 

Sounds like your copy of XP is indeed not bootable.

Try booting, when you get to the C prompt change to your CD drive letter, usually d:

type "dir".
find the .exe file and then retype that full *.exe name at the d: prompt

 

trouble with that Kronos is i dont get dos prompt.

 

Ahh...i see.

In that case we are back to the bootable CD.

The only way you are going to get this to work is with a bootable CD. Especially if you have no floppy drive.

 

floppy drive is fixed. on boot up with xp floppy disk 1 in drive it tries to verify DMI Pool data and restarts like 2 times. then i get a message of

BOOT: I/O error reading disk
Please insert another disk

 

Does your BIOS see the capacity of your hard drive in the standard CMOS setup?

 

Just read that it is detected in CMOS, from above. Try this, use your bootable Win98 disks and from the DOS prompt type:

fixmbr c:

 

How old is the CD-ROM drive that you are using s2k_9000rpm? Some old CD-ROM drives don't support bootable CDs..

I would be taking a close look at your IDE cables (assuming the HDD and CD-ROM are IDE and not SCSI) and ensuring that the little red line (if there is one on the cables) is on the same side to the power connector to the HDD or CD-ROM (ie that the IDE cables are plugged in the right way). You also want to make sure that the HDD is set up as a Master and that the CD-ROM is set up as a Slave (normally jumper switches on the drives) otherwise you can have issues.

If the above doesn't work I'd pull the HDD out of the equation by disconnecting it and focus on the CD-ROM and getting the bootable CD to do it's thing (and then worry about connecting up the HDD).