xp does not load on laptop

[Jimmyjaffa]

hi i have a compaq evo n600c laptop with xp media on it but since i loaded xp its started not to boot up.is there any way of formatting the hhd and reinstalling xp from the oreiginal cd i have?many thanks for any replies.p.s im a right noob

 

[eggplant]

hi i have a compaq evo n600c laptop with xp media on it but since i loaded xp its started not to boot up

bit confused there, it had XP media originally when it worked? or it had another operating system and since you put xp media on it now doesnt work?

 

[Jimmyjaffa]

sorry, i had it with no operating system on it.i loaded xp onto it and it worked fine for a while then it went tits up and takes ages for it to boot up so i want to start again by formatting hhd and reinstalling xp from the cd roms i have,also how do i configuer my laptop to boot from cd rom?

 

[breezer]

I can answer that

you need to go into the bios and tell it first bootable device is cd rom

when you initaly switch on it will tell you something like

"press del to go to boot up screen"

when you do you can select from where it boots from

 

[Jimmyjaffa]

hi i have found the boot options but there is no option for the cd rom.is there a way of enableing the cd rom.if so could you tell me pls.and thanks for the repls many thanks.jim

 

[eggplant]

hi i have found the boot options but there is no option for the cd rom

odd, does the cdrom drive work ok? What options do you see?

 

[eggplant]

Bells ringing!

ok on some compaqs the bios is what you might call erm, crap.
try this- power on machine and keep letter C pressed with bootable cd in and see if that does it.

 

[Jimmyjaffa]

ive tried holding c key didnt work,i've also tried START-RUN- then enterd cd-rom d:\setup.exe but it comes up as cd rom drive not found,made sure that the drive is enabled in device manager.

 

[eggplant]

could be your cdrom drive is on the blink, did you check device manager?

 

[Jimmyjaffa]

yes its enabled and working properly as i can load drivers etc from the drive with no problems

 

[Spark123]

Does your laptop have a built in floppy disk drive? A long shot but you could try booting to MSDOS with a boot disk (you'll need CD Drivers on the boot disk) and run the windows XP CD from there.
(Providing MSDOS has set the CD drive to D,)
At the A: prompt enter D: (or the letter it has set it to)
At the D: prompt enter SETUP
The CD should now hopefully start.