Instaling from a mirror

[dAVE]

My wife’s school Dell laptop ate its hard drive after 15 months. I have installed a new hard drive and have a set of “bootable” CDs that contain the Education Authorities mirror of the OS (XP Pro) and all their programs for this model. I follow the instructions supplied but the Dell keeps saying that it can’t find a boot sector on the hard drive and no other bootable devices, even though I have directed it to boot from the CD ROM.
If I create a set of bootable floppies from the Microsoft website and boot from them will I still be able to load the OS from the mirror discs?
PS I hate Dell but it was free.
Dave.

[NeoGen]

I'll risk saying yes. If that mirror has something related to the windows instalation at least. That 6-disk pack has already got me out of a couple of jams in other times. :)

And I've even once witnessed a young computer technician trying to format 3 computers to install Windows XP and software, but one of the machines wouldn't boot from CD. And the guy didn't have the disks. I happened to have the disks with me :twisted:, but I didn't say a word. I have a policy to not interfere in other people's work even when I see they're doing it wrong... :P :lol:

After time and time trying the guy ended up calling his boss and the man just came with the company van and a disappointed look, took the 3 computers to the store and brought them back all ready on the following morning.

[AMDave]

There was a lockergnome post about this (or at least very similar)
http://help.lockergnome.com/index.php?showtopic=28842
but their site says "Down for maintenance" at the moment
try that link later when they come back up

ITMT:
If you have set the BIOS to start from CD ROM first and it is complaining that there is no boot sector on the HDD, the it has probably inspected the CD first and not found a bootable CD, so then moved on to look for a HDD.

Check that you are inserting the correct CD (try each of the others in turn)

Otherwise you can try taking the CD that you think is bootable and attempt to see if another machine boots from it - note that this is risky !! the program may simply start and fail saying "this ain't no Dell Laptop!" (phew) or it could go right ahead and wipe the C drive and procede on it's merry way (I saw this with a compaq disk once that got past the BIOS check on a non compaq machine - SURPRISE ! uh oh...:oops: ) So if it starts and keeps going hit the reset button FAST and take the CD out during the reboot (phew :roll: ). At least that way you will find out which, if any, of the CDs is the bootable one you need.

What else?
Blow the cobwebs out of the laptop cd drive
and ensure that the CD surface is perfectly clean (hopefully no scratches :eek: )

[dAVE]

Thanks guys, you were both right. I spent 2 days of trying everything and my wife's IT department claiming that the discs had "been used dozens of times before so we know they are good" I then put them in my brand new AMD and, with my hand hovering over the reset button and a very dry mouth, I set it to boot. You guessed it, not bootable. A new mirror is being sent at last. Thanks again. Dave