Are there any other ways of putting a fresh copy of XP on a laptop. When I go through F8 I dont get the choice to boot from CD, when I go into the acer menu (F2) and boot from the cd, it starts to load then I get blue screen.

 

Cheers John

Hi,

Are you sure the disc isn't damaged? If you have the BIOS set to boot from disc, you should have no issues.

 

You can burn an ISO of the disc, and install it via a memory stick.

 

Have a read at this

http://wudt.codeplex.com/

 

I haven't tried it on anything other than Win7, but have read that it works on other OSs.

Sounds like the disc is either damaged or the laptop has a bad stick of memory. Why are you reinstalling? Is it crashing alot?

No whats happening is I have software I use with work, I need a fresh install of XP Pro and reinstall the software, I have 2 xp discs, one genuine SP2, the other I got froma forum member here, both when I boot from cd go so far then crash so its not the discs, I have used the genuine one on another laptop I have without issues.

 

I have a boot cd coming for the laptop as it came with the software installed, it had vista pro on it but i needed xp pro for the software, nightmare, nothing is straightforward lol.

 

The laptop is only 6 months old and has been used with the softweare only for about 20 or 25 times for about an hour each time tops, isnt used for anything else even internet.

 

Cheers John

when you say "it gets so far" does it get to extracting the files? or is it actually installing your software (after the extracting of files) ?

 

Blue screen could mean a number of different things. Windows is designed to throw up a blue screen to help narrow down the problem, but sometimes it will throw a random error in if it hasn't got a clue what caused it.

 

What are the specs of your laptop and can you try taking out a stick of ram? if you get the BS again, swap it for the other stick. and hope to god its not a bad sector on the hard drive.

Sounds like you need to set the disk to compatability mode in the BIOS (F2 setup)

johnny you have a PM mate

or to be a bit more clear, go into the BIOS find hard drive setting or SATA settings and it will most likely have the options of ACHI or Compatible. You want compatible

Guys thanks for the replies, got 2 Acer recovery discs and they ran and reinstalled a fresh copy of windows and all the drivers, so am sorted now.

 

Cheers John