Hi all I seem to be in a right mess. I decided to be a good hubby, and make the wife's Laptop run a bit better {she never liked Vista anyway} so i thought i would install my copy of XP onto her Laptop. Big mistake, i have formated the Laptop but now find that i cant install XP. So here is where i am at. The Laptop has no floppy drive, so i used a 1gig usb pen drive to format it, but the Laptop will not let me boot from the cd/dvd drive {it is a bootable disc} so i have tried booting from the pen drive, but i just seem to be going around in circles. Any help is greatly needed.
Yes i seem to be able to boot from the pen drive, but it goes through the part setting up files on the hard drive, gets to the EULA agreement {press F8 to aggree} restarts the computer, continues loading files, then says cant find EULA agreement.
But you can't boot from the CD drive? Because I know Windows has problems installing from a USB drive.
Sorry but i dont understand what you mean by your last post? I have installed windows {this particular copy} a few times on my old desktop p.c. but this is the first time i have tried on a Laptop {thought it would be the same process} I know the pendrive is seen as the C: drive, and that the hard drive becomes the D: drive, but everytime i try to install XP i get the same message {EULA} no matter which version of XP i try to put on.
What I am asking is if you put the windows install disc in the disc drive and reboot. Can/Will the laptop boot from the disc drive/windows install disc?
No, it just goes through making the noises of reading the disk, and then just says "no opperating system found" At first i thought the dvd drive was dead {not reading} so i called in a computer shop to buy a new dvd drive {well second hand one} asked the shopkeeper to try it first with a copy of WinXP {that he was trying to flog me} and it started loading straight away, told the shopkeeper i did not need a copy of XP as i had one at home, so i knew my dvd drive was o.k. But someone has told me that it is something to do with HP Laptops and how they are set up, that their dvd drives will not load a copied version of XP? seems strange that the original disc in the shop loaded straight away though. I have got about seven versions of Windows, ME, XP, and Vista, all off them have been on my desktop p.c. over the years, so i know that they are all bootable.
Since it is a laptop they usually look for a manufacturer made (in your case HP) restore disc. That could be the issue. That could be a issue, but it should be able to read a copied XP disc. If all else fails just try and get a hold of a legitimate XP disc and use that. Because if you use a genuine disc and it fails to install than you knowit isn't the discs and that it is hardware based(dvd drive).
