Installation Windows XP - The Adventure continues

Hi!

Recently, on a machine with windows Xp installed the OS refused to boot any more, simply demanding a boot disk. Immediately, a windows xp installation kit was acquired. Oddly enough, the kit works fine until it gets to the first restart. After restarting, the kit doesn't resume as it should. Instead, an error message similar to the following appears:

VFAT Device initialization failed. A device or resource required by VFAT is not present. VFAT cannot continue loading.

The error message that the OS was reporting earlier ( Prior to installation ) was:

NTLDR MISSING
Novell Net Ware Ready Firmware
RPL- ROM - FFE

Need Boot Disk

Is there any way to work around this problem without formatting the hard drive ? Why would anything like this happen in the first place ?

Stefano

 

What is a Windows Installation kit?

 

And this is an upgraded machine that had 98 or ME before, right? Another good reason to do a clean installation. Never saw any "VFAT's" around XP

 

Sorry Guys, the os installed was not XP, but Windows 98 SE. I apologize fort the Misunderstanding.

Should I format ?

Stefano

 

It just got more confusing. There is no ntldr in 98, but in NT-based systems. So where did that come from? Is there some more history?