[laurieirvine]

The internal Samsung 160GB drive in my Packard Bell Easynote E3265 laptop recently had some problems with corrupt XP boot files, resulting in my having to format it and lose a lot of data. I wanted to put XP back on the machine, but then found that I couldn't because the drivers for the hard disk require a floppy drive, which I don't have.

So, I got a direct download of Windows 7, I burned my .iso to DVD and tried to boot from that. I get 'no bootable CD in Atapi CD-ROM'. In my boot sequence I get no option for DVD, only CD, I don't know if this is the problem. It shows up as a DVD-R drive in BIOS. I can boot my XP installation CD ok, just can't actually install from it.

However, I also tried booting from a USB device, specifically an 8GB Compact Flash card in a USB card reader. Then all I get is 'Y∞∞Y∞∞' and nothing more. I can boot fine from a USB pen drive with puppy linux.

Don't know where to turn from here, guidance would be much appreciated, please

[Neil Jones]

Um, direct download of Windows 7? Off the internet? We can't really support that.

You can get USB floppies that will do the same job as an internal floppy, or you can go down the slipstream route which would remove the need for F6 on an XP installation.
Here's how you do it: http://www.digitgeek.com/how-to-slipstream...ers-into-xp-cd/

[laurieirvine]

I understand your quandary with the downloaded Windows 7, I freely admit that I have no intention of paying for it as I feel rather maligned by my previous, paid-for version of XP, which bugged out and lost me important data. However, if I can do it through slipstreaming then great, I would prefer XP by far. Thanks for the link to the tutorial, it's simpler and easier than others I've found.