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My original hd died, and I replaced it with a WD. I removed the old drive and set it aside. When I go to install XP using a disk from the manufacturer of the pc or the software that came with the drive, I cannot boot. I get "Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility." I've tried the cd in both the cd and dvd drives. Both drives were fine before the hd problem, and appear to be in working order.
I've edited the BIOS to make the cds the first in the line, and that didn't help.
When I check the settings in the bios it sees the new hd (I know because of manufacturer, model, and capacity are all listed there) as well as the dvd and cd. I just can't boot from a cd without getting this error message.
Advice greatly appreciated. As I've said, I've tried changing the boot order in the bios.
You do not need to change the boot sequence in what we used to call "cmos setup".
Put your OEM cd in the CD drive, restart the pc, and watch for a quick display in the
upper right hand corner of your screen saying: F2=setup F12=boot sequence. Hit
F-12 and the screen should indicate a number of options. Follow the instructions for
CD-Rom. The DVD drive may not be bootable. If this fails to work, disconnect the
cable from the DVD drive and deselect it in the setup menu. Repeat the F-12
sequence again.
The reason for not changing the boot sequence in F-2 setup is the pc will need to
reboot during the OS installation and there could be a problem with re-booting from
the CD when you should be re-booting off the HD.
In days of old, I always made a floppy disk with the three OS files, autoexec.bat,
config.sys and a cd driver in order to boot a blank HD. Now, with bootable CD's
that is not necessary.
Give all this a try, perhaps others will have better advice.
I should have mentioned in my original email that I had tried that to get it boot from cd, and it still went back to that same error message.
So I took the fool's way out and just kept trying again until I got it to work. I don't know what the problem was. I did try unplugging the power from the tower for a bit. Perhaps that made a difference. In any event I was able to install xp after that.
It was strange because I tried to research this problem, and had tried most of things that other people said would work. And some of the solutions that people had were inconsistent. I wonder if it's an effect caused by more than one problem.
