[eejacket99]

Hello.

I tried something else and got a different result.

I deleted all of the files, repartitioned the hard drive, and
installed all files from the XP CD to the hard drive.
(I am using XP Home).

I copied all files to the hard drive as is (so, for example,
setup.exe is at c:\setup.exe and the I386 folder is at
c:\I386). I just selected all of the files from the CD and
dragged them to the hard drive.

I went through the setup process (I typed c:\I386\winint)
and the process was going smoothly.

Then, it asks me to remove the disk from the A drive and
click Enter to reboot the computer. (It tells me to continue
the installation process, it needs to reboot).

I hit Enter, the computer reboots, but it doesn't continue the
installation process.

It tells me "Operating System Not Found" and does not
continue.

Thanks again for your time and help.

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OK, I'm going to make a completely different suggestion here. The method we have been using for installing from the hard drive works for win9x etc but I have never tried it with XP.
The reason I suspect that you are getting that error message is because the system boot files aren't on the drive. I also suspect there may be an issue with installing XP from the drive you are installing to.

So, can you hook up the drive to the desktop.
Repartition it as follows :
Create a primary partition of (total drive size minus 1GB) which is about 14GB in your case, right? This will become the c drive in the laptop.
Then create an extended partition which takes up the remaining disk space (1GB). Then create a single logical partition (1GB) in the extended one. If the software doesn't give you an option to create extended, then just create a logical, it should create the extended automatically. (This partition will become the D drive in the laptop).

Both partitions can be formatted as FAT32.
Next, open My Computer, right click on the new 14GB partition & select 'format'. If there is the option to copy system files in the format menu, then tick this & tick 'quick format'. If there isn't this option, then don't bother to quick format either, just cancel.

Copy the XP files the same way as before (i386 folder etc) but to the 1GB partition.

Replace drive in laptop, boot from floppy, switch to the D drive and run setup again.

Hopefully, this time it will work!

[Samm]

OK, I'm going to make a completely different suggestion here. The method we have been using for installing from the hard drive works for win9x etc but I have never tried it with XP.
The reason I suspect that you are getting that error message is because the system boot files aren't on the drive. I also suspect there may be an issue with installing XP from the drive you are installing to.

So, can you hook up the drive to the desktop.
Repartition it as follows :
Create a primary partition of (total drive size minus 1GB) which is about 14GB in your case, right? This will become the c drive in the laptop.
Then create an extended partition which takes up the remaining disk space (1GB). Then create a single logical partition (1GB) in the extended one. If the software doesn't give you an option to create extended, then just create a logical, it should create the extended automatically. (This partition will become the D drive in the laptop).

Both partitions can be formatted as FAT32.
Next, open My Computer, right click on the new 14GB partition & select 'format'. If there is the option to copy system files in the format menu, then tick this & tick 'quick format'. If there isn't this option, then don't bother to quick format either, just cancel.

Copy the XP files the same way as before (i386 folder etc) but to the 1GB partition.

Replace drive in laptop, boot from floppy, switch to the D drive and run setup again.

Hopefully, this time it will work!

[eejacket99]

Hello,

I followed your instructions as you showed in your last email.

After I use partition Magic, I have the following settings
on Disk 2 (these are the settings shown from PM. The
attached text file has this information not as cluttered
as below)

Partition Type Size (MB) Used (MB) Unused Status Pri/Log
Local Disk (F) Fat32 12,9665 12.7 12,953.8 None Primary
(*) Extended 1,435.5 1,435.5 1,435.5 None Primary
Local Disk (G) FAT32 1,435.5 11.1 1,424.3 None Logical

I tried the next step of coping system files to the format menu, but there
is no option for that. It only has a window that has a option to select,
"Capacity" (which I have 12.6 GB), "File System" (which I have FAT32),
"Allocation unit Size" (which I have Default allocation size), "Volume
Label" (which I left blank) and there are check boxes for Quick Format,
Enable Compression, and Create a MS-DOS startup disk.

Since there is no option to copy system files, I left this blank.

I then went and copied the I386 folder and the files in the root from my
XP disk to the G drive.

I then installed the hard drive into the laptop, inserted the
boot disk, got to the a prompt and typed:

cd d:\i386
winnt

(Note: I can also cd to the c drive. The computer recoginizes it, and
there is nothing on it)

The installation process begins and it tells me that it
is installing the files to my hard drive. (Afterwards,
I find out that it is installing the files to the C drive
not the D drive).

Once it is completed, it asks me to press enter to reboot
the computer and to take out any disk in the A drive.

I do this.

The computer screen then goes black with the message:

"No Operating System Found".

I have went through the procedure twice and I get
the same result.

Do you think I am going to have to try and find a
Windows98 CD and install from it?

Thanks again for your help.

Attached Files

•  PM.txt   1.85KB   245 downloads

Edited by eejacket99, 29 May 2005 - 08:41 PM.

[Samm]

Everything you have done so far has been spot on. The XP install will copy files to the C drive, this is normal. (remember that normally XP setup is run from CD & because you can't copy files to a CD, XP will copy them to the C drive instead)

All you should need to do now is this :

Boot laptop from a win98 floppy boot disk (make sure it is win98 version, not a pure dos disk)

When that has loaded, from the A> prompt, type format c:/s/q
When thats completed, from the A> prompt, type fdisk
Answer Y to large disk support
Select option 4 from the fdisk menu to display the drive
You should this listed :

HEADING 1ST LINE 2ND LINE
PARTITION C: 1 2
STATUS A
TYPE PRI DOS EXT DOS
ETC....

If there isn't an 'A' under status, then press esc to return to the main menu.
Select option 2 - set active partition, then select partition 1 to be made active
Quit out of fdisk

If there was an 'A' under status already, then just quit fdisk.

Remove the floppy disk & reboot.
This time the laptop should boot from the hard drive to the C> prompt.

If that all works, then insert the XP boot disk, reboot & install XP as before.

[eejacket99]

Hi Again,

Thank you so much for your help with this problem. I followed your instructions
and Windows XP installed just fine! I can't thank you enough
for helping me fix this laptop!

I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions about the
steps that we followed:

1. Can you give me a brief description of what we did and why
we did it?

2. What is the difference between a logic partition and a
primary partition?

3. What is an extended partition and why does Partition Magic create
it automatically (after creating a logical partition).

4. We have 2 partitions on the hard drive now. When the computer boots,
it asks which partition I want to boot with. If I remove the partition
all of the files on the D drive will this damage anything or should
I just leave it as is?

Thanks again sooo much for helping me with this problem. I really appreciate
all of your time and help that you have given me with this.

Edited by eejacket99, 13 June 2006 - 06:25 PM.

[Samm]

Thank you so much for your help with this problem. I followed your instructions
and Windows XP installed just fine! I can't thank you enough
for helping me fix this laptop!

I am planning on taking this laptop and donating it to an orphanage in
Russia. I went out yesterday and purchased a new CD Burner for it and
a external hard drive.

You are more than welcome, I'm sorry it took so long!

I think donating the laptop is a wonderful thing to do. My fathers side of the family are from Russia (2 generations back) so it's really nice to know that I've been able to make a tiny contribution by helping to fix the laptop.

I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions about the
steps that we followed:

1. Can you give me a brief description of what we did and why
we did it?

I will try & answer your questions as clearly as I can, but tell me if something doesn't make sense.

You had started by copying XP i386 folder to the laptop drive using desktop pc but when backin laptop, you couldn't access the C drive from the boot disk.
I guessed that this was due to the drive being set up to use NTFS file system (not supported by OS's other than XP,NT,2000).

Next I asked you to check the 'system' parameter in fdisk. Fdisk should have reported that the drive type was 'primary' & system was 'non-dos' if the drive was ntfs.
Instead fdisk reported the type as non-dos (instead of primary) and the system as 2 (instead of non-dos). Also it had recognised the drive sizes incorrectly.

Suspecting that something was very wrong, I asked you to use partition magic on the desktop to repartition the drive. PM recognizes far more drive sizes & file formats than win98 or DOS so was the best option.

We couldn't perform a 'copy system files quick format' in XP (to copy the boot files) so had to leave the drive blank. I was hoping that this wouldn't be a problem as the XP install should copy these to the drive itself.

Back in the laptop, you were still weren't able to access the drive from the boot disk. You correctly concluded that you were using the wrong boot disk - clearly one which doesn't support FAT32 (so probably a proper DOS disk instead of a Win98 Dos disk)

You then created a win98 boot disk & as a result had access to the drive.
When you ran the setup.exe for XP, you received the error 'program cannot be run in dos mode'. This was due to me being a pratt & telling you the wrong setup file. XPs setup is winnt in the i386 folder.

Also I recommended you downloaded a winXP boot disk to initiate the install instead. The install started but locked into a loop on reboot.
As the install files were copied into \options\i386 folder, I advised that you copy them without the options folder so that it resembled the directory structure of the CD.

This worked but instead of looping, it rebooted to 'No OS found' error. As XP should have put the boot files on the drive for you but hadn't, I guessed the reason may be because we were installing from the C drive to the C drive. XP expects to be installed from a different location (normally CD) so I suggested that you repartition the drive into 2 partitions thereby creating a D drive which would act as the CDROM drive.

The instal still resulted in the 'no OS found' error on reboot so I told you to run win98 fdisk & check the partition was active ('A' under status). Then I asked you to format the C drive using the /s switch. /s places the boot files on the drive, /q performs a quick format instead of a full one.

This time it worked.

2. What is the difference between a logic partition and a
primary partition?

A primary partition is the first partition on the drive (not all drives have a primary partition & it is also possible to have more than 1 primary partition but in normal circumstances there will be one & only the one). If you wish to create more than one partition, then the following ones are logical partitions, meaning they are not bootable. The primary partition is the only one which you can boot from (ie contains the boot files). You can install an operating system on the logical partition but its boot files will still reside in the primary.

3. What is an extended partition and why does Partition Magic create
it automatically (after creating a logical partition).

The extended partition is a container for the logical partitions.
The reason for the extended is this : you can have upto 4 primary partitions on a drive because the partition table in the boot sector has space for 4 entries but it cannot hold the details for more than 4 partitions in total. Because this is limiting & sometimes you want to create more than 4 partitions on a drive, the extended partition was devised to overcome this limitation.
What you would now have in the partition table, would be the physical address etc for the primary & the address for the extended, nothing more. The info about the logical partitions is stored inside the extended instead of the main partition table. This overcomes the 4 partiton restriction. (its still not a good idea to create more than 8 partitions in total though as this can cause problems with some OS's)

I guess Partition magic creates the extended automatically to make partitioning simpler for people who don't understand it.

4. We have 2 partitions on the hard drive now. When the computer boots,
it asks which partition I want to boot with. If I remove the partition
all of the files on the D drive will this damage anything or should
I just leave it as is?

You should be able to delete the files on the D drive now. The advantage though of having the i386 folder somewhere on the system (C drive or D drive) is so if windows ever needs them (eg when add/removing windows components or installing certain drivers etc) it has them there. This is not really an issue though if you have a CD drive & a copy of XP on CD with the laptop. You can also remove the option to boot with the D drive by editting the boot.ini file.

Before you delete any files, you had best let me see the boot.ini file just to make sure that removing them won't be a problem. I can also show you then how to remove the reference to the D drive from the boot menu. The boot.ini file is in the root of the C drive and is normally hidden, so you need to change your settings so you can view hidden/system files. When you have located the file, open it in notepad & copy & paste the contents in a post.


Samm

[Supergeek.dcse]

here is a way of doing it bit long winded but if you have got the 2 partion working then copy win98 to 2nd part install 98 to c drive when that fin dont worry about video drivers and all that with the copy of xp you have put on to the 2nd part just do it as an upgrade that way the boot sector wont dissapear when you reboot

[Samm]

here is a way of doing it bit long winded but if you have got the 2 partion working then copy win98 to 2nd part install 98 to c drive when that fin dont worry about video drivers and all that with the copy of xp you have put on to the 2nd part just do it as an upgrade that way the boot sector wont dissapear when you reboot

What on earth are you on about? I have no idea what it is you would hope to achieve by doing this.
Besides which, you can't install win98 over XP ( which is what you would be doing by installing win98 to a partition that already contains XP) and you certainly can't install 2 op systems to a single partition like that.

Even if someone were to do what you're suggesting (by formatting the c drive prior to the win98 install), I don't see how it's going to solve anything or help anything. Why would the boot sector disappear on reboot anyway?