trying to go from win98 to xp using restore discs

here is the deal-when i first got my computer, which is a desktop, it came with windowsxp home-well, at some point i tried to reformat on what was, at the time a faulty cdrom drive-it kept quitting at the same spot so i never got xp back, but i did, however, have the full version of windows98 so i tried that and it worked-i recently got a new cdrom drive and that works great when the computer is fully booted up, but if i put my xp recovery disc in and boot up, it does not read it-in fact, the the cdrom drive doesn't read any discs when booting up-i REALLY want xp back!! please help!!

 

How do you have your BIOS set to boot your system? You should have it set to boot from the CD-ROM before C: Drive.

 

when i go into my system bios, i see the following:
Main Advanced Security Power Boot Exit
i assume i am supposed to go to boot to do this and when i do i see the following:
CDROM Drive
Removable Devices
Hard Drive
Network Boot
i see nothing about floppy drive
so am i doing something wrong here?
please give me detailed instructions on how to set the cdrom drive to boot first

 

Go into Advanced CMOS Settings, or it may say Advanced BIOS Settings
You will see one of the two here:

First Boot Device
Second Boot Device
Third Boot Device

OR

Boot Order.

If you see First Boot Device, use the arrow keys to get there, then use PAGEUP or PAGEDOWN keys to change to CD-ROM.
Change Second Boot Device to HDD-0 [this is your hard drive].
Do not worry about Third Device.

If you see Boot Order, use arrow keys to get there, and use PAGEUP or PAGEDOWN keys to change to this.
CD-ROM, HDD-0
Do not worry if there is a third item here or not, just have those two there in that order.

In either case, when done, use the ESC key to back out of Advanced, then select Save Settings and Exit. You'll get prompted to Save, type a Y.

When it is booting, and the CD is in, you will see this message appear;
Booting from CDROM
and periods appearing, press Enter at this time, and it will boot from the CD, otherwise it will then go to the hard drive.
Remember this when installing XP, because when setup reboots for the first and second time, you need the CD in, but you need not to press Enter, but let it go to the hard drive, else it will start setup from the beginning again.

 

when i go to advanced i see the following:
Frequency Ratio
Plug and Play OS
Reset Configuration Data
Default Primay Video Adapter
PS/2 Mouse
Local Bus IDE Adapter
Large Disk Access Mode
Legacy USB Support
Onboard Lan Control
I/O Device Configuration
Advanced Chipset Control
Onboard Audio Options

i see nothing anywhere about boot device or boot order

oh not sure if you'll need this info but i have the following:
emachines t4160
P4 1.6gigahurtz
80gb seagate 7200HDD
256mb sdr pc133 ram
32mb nvidia tnt2 gfx card agp

 

Then your Bios has it in a different place, go to each one from the opening screen until you find it.
http://www.emachines.com/support/view_faq.html?faq=1004998907#6
The link above says to look in System BIOS.
Q: How can I change the boot up sequence from CD-ROM first to floppy drive first? top

A: You can alter the boot up drive sequence when you enter the system BIOS setup.

 

"Recovery Disks "??

If you never got further than

you may very well still HAVE XP on the system, if so, a "Repair Install" might be sufficient. How do you have your partitions set up? If you want to clean install do all of your back ups, because you will lose all reformatted partitions.

Did your comp come with any paperwork explaining your "recovery disks "? Sometimes, they are hard to use. You do have valid product keys, right? You could try borrowing a friend's XP disk (if you suspect yours is bad) and use it for your install but use your own product key , or you will mess up his and your systems when it comes to getting updates and WPA.

Either way, repair or clean install, you must be able to boot from CD to do what you want.

HTH
Johanna

 

i mean the 2 discs that came with my computer that i use to reformat my harddrive-also, windows 98 is all i have on here-there are no other partitions

to christer: i tried booting from the cd on another computer and it did work, but in this computer, it doesn't matter what is in the cdrom drive-nothingwill spin when it is booting up, but they work fine when it fully booted up so i know my cdrom drive works-seems i'll never have xp back

 

Do you have your manual that came with your computer? If you do or you can download it look in it as to how they want you to use the recovery disk. On my notebook I have to have the disk in my CD-ROM and hold down the C key to do a recovery.

 

back when i had xp and my original working cdrom drive, i reformatted many times just by putting the restore disc in the cdrom and rebooting-no idea why it won't work now

 

fonzbear2000

You're confusing some of us by equating reformat and restore.
You are trying to restore XP and I think your restore disk is defective and needs replacement.

 

it has nothing to do with the disc-it does NOT matter what is in the cdrom when i boot up-nothing will spin-i tried the disc in a different computer and it worked fine-and i know its not my cdrom drive because once my computer is fully booted up, the cdrom works just fine

 

when you say "when the start button is hit ", i assume you mean when i turn my computer on-when i boot up the cdrom light does light up followed by the floppy drive
also, when i boot up i only see the windows98 logo and then my desktop comes up right after-i don't see that message that says "searching for boot record from cdrom "-the version of windows98 on here is the full version for computers without operating systems

 

According to the link Markp62 supplied, you need to press the delete key at boot to enter BIOS. There, you need to change the boot order to CD first. There is no other way to boot from cd, which you NEED to do in order to install your XP. The reason your cd isn't spinning is because the harddrive is booting because you haven't set it to boot from cd first.

Johanna

 

I'm confused and I have some questions:

My edits in parentheses:

what happens if you try to run restore or recovery when the computer is fully booted?

 

i checked my bios and the cdrom is the first thing to boot first