XP Setup won't load with hdd connected

[kmount]

Here's a puzzler for you all..

 

Dell Latitude D610 won't load XP setup when the hdd is connected. You get the press any key to boot from CD which you do and then you get the usual checking hardware and the hdd indicator blinks once and the machine hangs at a black screen with no cdrom activity when you'd expect the familiar blue + white windows install screen.

 

Some notes:

 

* Removal of hdd set up runs fine

 

* Will boot no problem from any linux livecd I've used but point blank refuses to boot from either of the two XP CDs I've tried

 

* Will boot however from a Vista DVD

 

I've been able to recover all of the data using a linux livecd and smarttools is quite happy there's no disk problems in an extended test.

 

The fault reported to me was "disk read error, press ctrl alt del" when trying to boot windows which we all know means XP has had a tantrum and needs a chkdsk/fixboot/fixmbr/a cuddle.

 

I don't care about the data anymore but if I can't boot the bloody thing to install XP I'm loathed to trash the partitions to find I still can't.

 

Any intelligent ideas welcomed.

 

Ta.

[kmount]

Oh, and yeah I'm currently running chkdsk from the vista DVD to see if that will trick it into playing again.

 

EDIT: which just finished and the problem persists.

[john]

HDD Drivers perhaps? Vista had many more drivers for IDE, SATA and SCSI Raid and non-raid controllers so maybe that could be it?

[kmount]

HDD Drivers perhaps? Vista had many more drivers for IDE, SATA and SCSI Raid and non-raid controllers so maybe that could be it?

 

Thanks, reasonable idea. Don't recall needing any before when I replaced the hdd in the laptop 6 months ago and I've even tried the dell fix-me-up cd that comes with it

 

Thanks for the suggestion though, it's one I hadn't considered.

[EduTech]

HDD Drivers perhaps? Vista had many more drivers for IDE, SATA and SCSI Raid and non-raid controllers so maybe that could be it?

 

I agree there, but don't you normally get to installing windows and then it fails to find any hard drives on the machine and tells you to just quit and try again?

 

@Kim - Believe it or not i am actually in the middle of re-building a PC for a friend of mine at the moment and had a similar problem, I used an External CD Drive and it worked prior to this it just kept failing to boot from the CD on the internal drive. It wouldn't even touch Windows 7 on the External Drive. So do you have an External Drive at hand you could maybe try?

 

James.

Edited January 8, 2011 by EduTech

[kmount]

My personal belief is that there's some filesystem / boot sector damage and windows XP set up is seeing it and falling over in a big heap because it literally bombs out as soon as the hdd indicator fires up.

 

I suppose when I've exhausted all other options I'll just trash it in linux and then see if xp set up will find it.

[round2it]

copy the xp cd to another cd at slowest speed

 

i have had problems with the d610 here the cd drives only like certain brands of cd-r/dvd

 

or run the setup from a usb stick this gets rid of the need for the cd-drive

 

or as an acid test pop another hd in and try running the setup

[kmount]

Thanks for the suggestions but I cannot imagine it's the XP CD if the same CD works when the hdd is removed from the laptop.

[Arthur]

Another option would be to boot from the Vista disc, go to the command prompt, swap the Vista disc for the XP one, change to the i386 folder and then run the command below.

 

winnt32.exe /makelocalsource /s:[b]D:\i386[/b] /syspart:C: /tempdrive:C: /noreboot

 

XP will copy all the files it needs to your HDD. Once this has finished, reboot the laptop and the setup wizard will continue installing Windows as if you were installing it from a disc.