[jmckin06]

Hello,

I recently tried formatting and reinstalling Windows XP on my second laptop (Alienware Area 51m) with a normal Windows XP Professional SP 2 CD. It formatted just fine, and went through the first process just great. After rebooting it, and going to the installing windows part, it does not get any farther. It gives me a fatal error, stating "The signature for Windows XP Professional Setup is invalid. The error code is 800b0100. No signature was present in the subject."

If it helps, it had Windows XP Home and I'm trying to put Professional on it. I do not have a floppy disk drive in this so I cannot boot to a different OS. Also, it absolutely REFUSES to boot to CD-ROM or I could probably fix this problem. It has "!" before CD-ROM Drive and Removable Devices, and the third one is Hard Drive.

Thanks.

EDIT: Ack. Sorry for the double topic, something messed up...

Edited by jmckin06, 15 December 2006 - 02:29 PM.

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with a normal Windows XP Professional SP 2 CD

where'd you get the disk from? do a physical inspection of the disks are there any scratches or smudges?

[dsenette]

with a normal Windows XP Professional SP 2 CD

where'd you get the disk from? do a physical inspection of the disks are there any scratches or smudges?

[jmckin06]

I got it through my college. It's brand-new, no smudges, nothing wrong with it at all.

[dsenette]

do you have access to another XP pro disk? can you try that? you can use the CDKey from the one you own (or the one on the laptop itslef) with the other disk to keep it legal

[jmckin06]

The problem is it won't even BOOT to the CD-ROM. Or else I could fix this problem another way..

[dsenette]

ah...got ya

is the cdrom detected in bios at all?

[jmckin06]

It's detected, but it won't boot to it.

[dsenette]

i'm going to assume you set it first in the boot order?

[jmckin06]

Yep. My hard drive is on the bottom. CD-ROM Drive has an ! before it though, I'm not too sure what that means. (assuming it cannot boot to that device)

[dsenette]

it has a ! in bios? haven't seen that yet...

[jmckin06]

Yeah I know.. I was confused myself. I just need to know how to completely restart the install of XP, from the blue screen and all.

[trid2bnrml]

I've seen the ! in Sony Vaio's bios. It means you have a hardware problem with your cd-rom. What worked for me with the Sony was to pull the cd-rom module out and reboot, then shut it down, replace the module and reboot. The OS picked up the hardware config change and reinstalled the cd-rom---end of problem.

assuming of course that you have a similar removable module----