Computer Blues

Well I finally got an OS for my computer recently in the form of XP, I installed it then played around a bit, then worked to install a driver for my new mother board. At one point I'm required to restart, so I do, then it boots up into some strange dos mode asking me for a floppy drive (which I don't have since I have no need for one), regardless of the abort and failure options I get the same response. I ignore this and just restart the computer to go back into Windows. I get an error that reads along the lines of "Boot disk failure, please insert disc and press enter to boot from disc" I've tried have a disk in, nothing, no disk, nothing, I've changed the boot priority to boot from hard drive only and still nothing.

Well me and my brother went and just reinstalled Windows to see if that would fix it. As soon as it was done and I was on the desk top we restarted, changed boot priority, and then worked to get it back into windows. But I got the same error again.

So now the question, what's going wrong with my installing of drivers and windows?

I dont think the problem is with windows, but with your motherboard. You should have gotten a disc or cd with your motherboard for installation and the first driver.. try installing that.

I think it's likely to be an issue with a setting in your BIOS. What's the exact brand and version of BIOS you have?

I would've suggested that it was the boot priority. Have you disabled all other boot media (CD drive, removable, network and floppy)?

The other (unlikely) possibility is that you're planning to use a SATA RAID hard drive setup, in which case you need to install drivers before the Windows installation starts. :p

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What's the exact brand and version of BIOS you have?

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Now here's where my computer knowledge ends, I don't know where to find out this info. However I can tell you some motherboard info, it's an Asus M2N-E. Beyond that I'm not sure where to find info on my BIOS, been reading through this user guide like crazy to figure things out.

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I would've suggested that it was the boot priority. Have you disabled all other boot media (CD drive, removable, network and floppy)?

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Yup, we've had everything disabled except for hard drive and got the error, then changed it to just the DVD drive, failed. The only thing that gave me activity is after I reinstalled XP on it.

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The other (unlikely) possibility is that you're planning to use a SATA RAID hard drive setup, in which case you need to install drivers before the Windows installation starts.

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Well looking through my user guide I have the SATA RAID driver ability, but that's not a part of the actual drivers list.

In short I don't know enough of this technical stuff yet. :p

You can get into BIOS setup by pressing F12 or F10 at startup.. at least i think that thats the BIOS setup. as you dont need windows to start it and it displays the most basic hardware functions of your computer.

Well laziness finally lost and I decided to boot up my computer to find out my BIOS.

At the top of the screen it says "Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS"

Would that be the info you need? Or do I gotta dive in deeper on my system.

Windows XP is a pig to install with SATA HDs, RAID enabled or not, which is virtually all new computers these days, unless you're lucky enough for the manufacturer to have preinstalled or provided a custom XP install image for you :p

The easiest way I find is download nLite on a working Windows machine with the XP CD (or image of) available on that machine, and follow the wizard through that program. Make sure you include the correct SATA drivers from your motherboard manufacturer when it asks about including any additional drivers or similar, that's the important bit - don't worry too much about all the other tweaks unless you're feeling experimental :p Then let it create a new XP CD and burn that to a new disk, and use that to install XP as normal :p The new CD is effectively a custom XP installation disk for the machine you included the drivers for. :p

Well the only computer in my place that works with a DVD/CD burner is my brothers and I don't know if he's on XP or not. (Chances are not I think)

So is your way still viable even if it's not on a system with XP even though I have the XP install disc?

A small update. My brothers friend who is quite handy with computers stopped by and managed to fix that initial problem. The next snag I've hit is my computer won't recognize my LAN set up. We think it's a drivers issue (I didn't install my drivers because he said the ones from the given disc were crap basically and initially caused my computer problems) I installed the updated drivers from their website, unfortunately they don't have a nice install feature so I'm lost on how to actually get them installed on my computer.

'my computer > right click >properties> hardware>device manager (or just use the accessories/system tools start menu item)> pick a device> right click> properties> some tab or another > update driver> choose location"

that's off the top of my head, but you get the idea. it's that annoying screen windows always gives you when you have something you want to install but it asks for a driver. you could just click 'unrecognized device' somewhere, probably too, if it's usb.