A tip for anyone with plenty of disk space.

Create a directory called Setup on your C drive and a sub dir called windows XP. Copy your installation CD here and it is always availible when needed.

You can also copy any program CD's to a separate directory under Setup. Most times you can install the program from here which is also far faster.

I want to create a boot up disk.
Im using XP PRO.
So far I have put a Floppy disk in. chosen Format: create a startup disk and done that.
I then changed my bios to boot from A first. It does this then I get a Command prompt (Hope thats the right word) what do I type to see if my Bootup disk is working?
Also can I create a startup on a CD.?
If the above is the totally wrong way of doing it. HELP Please!:-)

Iain

You can't create a boot disk for Win XP. If you are using a FAT32 file system you can create an MSDOS boot disk that will access the hard drive but it will not load XP. You can also find some Lynux based boot disks that will read an NTFS disk.

You can use the recovery console, which is availible at boot or on the installation CD, to fix any Win XP boot problems. This has some powerful utilities but you need to know what you are doing.

If you are using FAT32 file system you would do well to convert to NTFS. Sooner or later it will save your data.

When I have Formatted drive previously It has copied in NTFS.
So if i have probs I use recovery console?
I Have a bit of Knowledge.Dangerous?:-)

You can only format a hard drive in NTFS not floppeis or CD.

Recovery console is a way of accessing XP from a command line when it won't boot. The most used command is probrably "CHKDSK" which is OK. Use caution with any others.

Iain, why do you think you need a boot disk? its not normally needed or advised with w2k onwards?

Optimist, thanks for the help so far, but still struggling. Re my post 1731, I have tried to get into the windows networking stuff, this is what I have:

Using Win 98 in control panel, I have "Network". Click on that brings up three tabs, first is Configuration. In this it says:

Client for Microsoft networks
Microsoft family login
Dial up adapter
TCP/IP

Is one of these the one I want to remove? Sorry for being so thick but I feel I am in a vat of treacle making slow progress at the moment. TIA (again!).

Seymour

Right click network neibourhood and select properties. You should get a list of all your network connections including dial up, LAn and wireless networks (if you have been unlucky enough to aquire any trojan dialers they will also be listed here so it is worth checking). If there are any that connect to your wireless card then delete them - it is possible that the instalation never got that far and therefore there are no connections.

What you are trying to do is get rid of all possible refferences to your wirless card so that when you reinstall it Windows has the best chance of sorting it automatically. Ifg that does not work we will have to find some other way.

Edit I think you may have got to your list by the method I suggested in which case you don't have a connection to the wirless card so don't worry about that stage.

Morning All,

Just thought I would update everyone on my proposed RAID setup and the resolution of the problems, see earlier post 1713

I managed to set up the raid array as raid 0. Apparently Windows needs a third party driver to make this work. Consulted my manual, found the relevant file using search and attempted to load into the new machine to make the discs work from the floppy drive (copied file)

No joy here. Consulted Gigabyte, told the file was in the boot driver section, bootdrv, found this again using search, went to the menu and up comes a dos screen giving various selections of drivers for additional arrangements. Put floppy into drive, selected the driver for the Silicon Image raid array and the drivers were copied to the floppy.

When loading up Xp, it comes to a screen where it asks if you want to load third party drivers, if you do not have any the setup fails. Click S and the floppy starts and loads in the relevant links. I have a feeling the other software is actually on the Xp disc.

Setup then continues as normal. When finished alter the bios to boot from SCUZI and not from the IDE port.

Thanks for all the help in the past.

2abbey, glad you are sorted, when you reported the problem earlier it sounded as though you hadnt got the drives working, normally you can check raid drives via the raid BIOS on the mobo (or raid card).

The method you describe is the standard way of specifying raid or scsi arrays for w2k and xp.

2abbey

Good to see you got it sorted. I'm still interested to know why you need to have a RAID array.

o is biffer over the road sorted out? i wasnt sure from his posts?

S I think he is still trying things but concentrating on cooling. which IMO is the first thing to eliminate.

O yes, did you see my comments re that one, may be the heatsink is not alligned if one of the pads is missing. I agree with yo its probably cooling if he has bigger cpu or extra cards etc could be power.

Edit Wrong thread

S Yes I did see your comments. Very useful as I had not come accross the pad system myself. I think he may get a new CPU heatsink which should prove it one way or the other.

Initially my problem was one of setting up the Raid array in the bios, eventually sorted that by trying various combinations etc, the suggestions in the handbook didn't seem to work,

Optimist, just thought I would try one as I needed one new drive in any event and since the mobo supports raid i would give it a try. Heard good results as for speed etc.

In the process of updating for microsoft atm, big list!

2Abbey

Thanks for your thoughts you should certainly have a fast machine. My only worry is that you now have two chances of disk failiure.

A lesson to us all!

Loaded up the software, just Xp at this point, then the modem software and logged on to the Microsoft site to get the relevant updates.

Problems started here, needed Service Pack 1 and other updates, initial file downloads and then a window appears initiating the remainder of the download. The window disappears!!

It seems that the computer had been struck with a virus, already!! Microsoft inform me that this is a symptom of the Sasser Worm virus.

Reformatted drives and reloaded software, then anti-virus software, then connected to the web. Seems you can't be too careful.

2Abbey

Sorry to hear of your problems.

Make sure that the Win XP firewall is turned on before you connect. It is turned off by deffault.