Reformatting Hard Drive

Another thought,

You could make a boot floppy on a XP computer that works normally. The process is simple and the floppy can be used to boot the ailing computer and bypass the boot loader files on the HD.

Here's how:

1. Format a floppy on the NT based system.
2. Copy or Drag/Drop the following three files from your C: root to the floppy:

NTLDR
NTDETECT.COM
BOOT.INI

That's it!
Caution: It is absolutely necessary that the format of the floppy take place on an NT based system since the boot code differs from a DOS/Win9x/ME system.

Place this floppy in the ailing rig and boot to it. With luck you'll get into Windows albeit with several errors in your case. Be sure your boot order in the BIOS is set to boot the floppy drive first.

Worth a shot.

 

Thanks Christer, I've apparently been missing that point of not having a floppy drive in the ailing rig. In that case it would still be possible to create a bootable cd with those same files on them. It's a little different procedure but most burner software offers the "Make bootable CD" option.

Then of course it is also possible to make a bootable cd that contains all the utilities of a boot floppy. The possibilities are there to get around this curse if BlackOps want to make it a quest.

Edit: I have the Winternals program thatr can access and read/write to NTFS files in a command boot session but it's not a cheap solution.

 

Puzzle, puzzle, toil and trouble....
Why is it asking for the disk? After you get past the text mode part of the setup and it enters into the gui mode part it does not use nor need the cd. I wonder if you went back into your bios and set the boot sequence/order back to the harddisk c: as the first choice option if the setup wouldn't get past your current problem.

---I'm Curious-------
I've read some references where various users where able to get a commnad prompt while windows is in the driver load phase of an install by pressing the key combo of SHIFT+F10 to start a command session. Can you do this?