Computer wont let me reformat.....why??

Frost-Fire

Frost-Fire

Frost-Fire

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Joined
21 Aug 2007
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I just rebuilt my computer and got it all working.

I boot from the windows disc and the usual windows setup blue screen comes up and loads all the usual files for a few minutes.

However instead of then giving me the normal menu asking which drive i want to reformat/install windows on it says 'starting windows' and a blue screen of death appears, which it would given that windows wont work until i reformat since i have installed a new mobo etc.

Why is it not allowing me to format? Could the windows install disc be faulty?
Any advice would be appreciated!
 
I guess a better and shorter way to describe this would be to say that instead of going to the welcome to setup screen it attempts to start the dud windows (and predictably fails)
 
Have tried with only 1 hdd, it was even the drive with no OS on it and it still tried 2 start XP instead of giving me the welcome to setup screen
same story with another xp disc as well.... really dont know what 2 do if it isnt goin 2 let me install windows :/
 
I was getting this problem after a fiddle with my PC - Load Optimized Defaults in Bios fixed my problem. Try this.
 
Are there some SATA drivers you need to install?

There's an option to press F6 at the start of Windows XP installation to install any SATA / RAID / SCSI drivers you might need.
 
A brand new hard drive may need to be fdisk'd, or prepared.

Do you have another computer you can attach it to in order to see if it shows up?
 
None of the HDDs are brand new, they have all been used for some time. I will check my bios options but i have not seen anything out of the ordinary. I cant see why i would need 2 install any 3rd party drivers, i have never needed to before and have used these drives to do a reformat before.
The parts of my rig that i changed were the mobo, CPU, and RAM, everything else was working fine in my old comp.
Any other ideas for bios options that could be causing this?
 
If it's XP you're installing, you will most probably have to install the SATA drivers before installing Windows.

Create a floppy with the drivers on and press F6 when prompted at the start of XP installation. Install the relevant drivers before continuing with the install and it should hopefully be OK.
 
Interesting. That could be the case, but i have to say i have done reformats with these drives before and never had a problem until i changed the mobo.
The comp doesnt have a floppy drive, i havent used them for years :/
 
Frost-Fire said:
Interesting. That could be the case, but i have to say i have done reformats with these drives before and never had a problem until i changed the mobo.
The comp doesnt have a floppy drive, i havent used them for years :/
Click to expand...

z0mbi3 said:
Alternatively see if you have an option in your bios to set your HDDs to IDE mode.
Click to expand...

If you can set HDDs to IDE mode in the bios then you won't need to install drivers during XP installation.
 
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