[auxitrooper]

I wiped my hard drive so that I could re-install Windows XP, this was to get rid of Windows 7. The drive has been re-partitioned and formatted. Now, booting with the XP disc, it loads several drivers and tells me that Windows is starting (from the blue install screen) and then the BSOD comes up. I get this error: 0x0000007B (0xF78D663C, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000).

I also ran Scandisk from a bootdisk and it says that there is a bad sector where IO.sys is kept. Occasionally when I reboot it still attempts to load windows 7.

So, where is windows 7 still hiding if the main partition and the restore partition were wiped? With the bad sector do I need a new hard drive? Ultimately I want XP on this machine, how can I make that happen from this point?

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Welcome to Geeks2Go!

With some Windows 7 installations, the boot manager is written to a separate & hidden 100MB partition which is active.
If this hasn't been re-formatted or erased it will continue to "drive" the boot process.
Since there can only be one active partition on the system, you need first to delete that one so that Windows XP Setup can make the new "target" partition active instead.

You'll need to use a utility which can wipe the entire drive, including hidden partitions, in a single process.
DBAN can do this. It runs from a bootable CD or floppy-disk: http://www.dban.org/help

If you continue to get bad sector errors at your next attempt at XP installation, the drive may be starting to fail so need to test it to confirm. Ascertain what make the drive is, then download the appropriate diagnostic software in the form of an ISO CD-image from the appropriate link in the list at the top of this page: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287

Edited by phillipcorcoran, 17 May 2011 - 10:34 AM.

[phillipcorcoran]

Welcome to Geeks2Go!

With some Windows 7 installations, the boot manager is written to a separate & hidden 100MB partition which is active.
If this hasn't been re-formatted or erased it will continue to "drive" the boot process.
Since there can only be one active partition on the system, you need first to delete that one so that Windows XP Setup can make the new "target" partition active instead.

You'll need to use a utility which can wipe the entire drive, including hidden partitions, in a single process.
DBAN can do this. It runs from a bootable CD or floppy-disk: http://www.dban.org/help

If you continue to get bad sector errors at your next attempt at XP installation, the drive may be starting to fail so need to test it to confirm. Ascertain what make the drive is, then download the appropriate diagnostic software in the form of an ISO CD-image from the appropriate link in the list at the top of this page: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287

Edited by phillipcorcoran, 17 May 2011 - 10:34 AM.