Are you certain that you have a partition created that will hold XP? You may
wish to start over again with a clean slate. You can use the XP CD's
Recovery Console to do this. First ensure the Hard drive is connected to the
Primary Controller cable and the jumper is set as Master. For the purpose of
troubleshooting don't connect anything else on the Primary Controller cable
just the hard drive you want to install XP on. Connect your CD-Rom device on
the Secondary Controller cable. When installing XP you should ensure you do
not have any USB storage devices connected (like USB drives) or memory
cards, including printers or cameras connected. These can be interpreted by
the XP installer as "C" drive and an attempt will be made to install there.
Sometimes a barebones install is advisable. You only need to have one hard
drive, one CD-Rom device, mouse, keyboard and monitor connected to install
XP.

Providing all is connected properly you should boot the XP CD. At the first
screen it stops on you should be asked if you want to Setup XP or use the
Recovery Console to do a repair - Press "r" to access the Recovery Console.
It will come to a command prompt. At the command prompt type the following
and press Enter key:

DISKPART

This will give you a screen that shows your current partitions. Delete all
the partitions you see there. This will only take a second. Do not worry
about creating partitions. Leave the XP CD in the drive and at the command
prompt type the following and press Enter Key to reboot:

EXIT

The computer should restart. Press a key when prompted to boot the CD. The
XP installer should see a blank, unpartitioned hard drive and begin it's
identification and setup process. Continue on using the tutorial you've
found. At the end of Step Three the system reboots. Do not press any key
when prompted by the message "press any key to boot cd..." The message will
disappear in a few seconds and you should see the graphical display as in
Step Four of the guide.



--

Harry Ohrn MS-MVP [Shell\\User]
www.webtree.ca/windowsxp


"Jordan" <Jordan@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:6016E968-4AFA-49CD-A746-0C3A04FBCFFF@microsoft.com...
> UPDATE:
> I tried Andrew E's method of reformating and then partitioning. It didn't
> work. I am unsure about what Talahasee and Harry Ohrn are speaking of. If
> you
> guys could go in depth a little more, I would be able to follow it. I
> think
> there may be some confusion. I'm trying to install Windows XP, not 98.
> Sorry,
> I'm not to good with this whole setup thing.
>
> Basically, I'm frustrated, and I don't know what to do. It always takes me
> back to the same screens, and its getting really frustrating. I found a
> Windows XP guide to installing. Basically, I can get to the END of step
> THREE, and then it starts over with Step Three. Here is the link to the
> guide, so you can see exactly what I see EVERYTIME:
> http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_pro.htm
>
> If anybody has any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate them, because I
> am at a complete loss right now. Thanks for everybody's help so far! Its
> so
> frustrating getting this stuff running, but once I do, it will be worth
> it.
>
>> Hey Everybody,
>> I've built a new computer, and I've got all of my hardware installed
>> correctly, and everything seems to be running fine, except for the fact
>> that
>> I can't install an operating system. Whenever I partition the space to
>> install Windows, the disc copies all of the files into the right
>> directories,
>> and then says that it needs to restart to continue setting up. So the
>> computer restarts, and then it goes RIGHT BACK to the screen asking me
>> which
>> portions to partition. It shows the one that I did earlier, but I can't
>> do
>> anything with it but delete it. THere is no recovery or anything.
>>
>> -I have tried multiple variations of the boot orders
>> -I have left the entire thing unpartitioned when installing windows and
>> it
>> still did the same error.
>> -I have tried mulitple variations of sizes when partitioning space
>> -I have entered into the bios, and changed my HD to Large
>> -I have checked to make sure the cables dealing with slave/master are
>> correct
>>
>> Here is what happens when I try to run it without the CD after
>> partitioning
>> the space: It doesn't boot, and it asks me to put the boot cd in the
>> drive. I
>> have formatted using FAT and NTFC or whatever its called.
>>
>> I have an ABIT AN8 Motherboard with an AMD3700+ with 1 gig of ram.
>>
>> Can anybody help me?