Will not boot and will not go into setup.. Cannot boot from bootable DVD either. System has Windows XP pro, 1 gig ram,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0cop_am1WM

First you must boot from a CD or DVD or from a floppy disk and not from the hard drive.

Creating a Windows XP boot disk

Note: The Microsoft Windows XP CD is a bootable CD and in many cases you should not need a bootable floppy diskette. Booting from the Windows XP CD will allow you to not only install/re-install Windows XP but will also allow you to troubleshoot it.

Create MS-DOS bootable diskette

When formatting a floppy diskette, users have the option of creating a MS-DOS startup disk, follow the below steps to do this.

1. Place diskette in the computer.
   
2. Open My Computer, right-click the A: drive and click Format.
   
3. In the Format window, check Create an MS-DOS startup disk.
   
4. Click Start
   

How to boot from Microsoft Windows XP CD.
1. Restart the computer while it is rebooting keep on tapping on F12
2. In the boot menu option select on CD/DVD Rom the press Enter
3. Computer will restart and you will be prompted to " Boot from CD/DVD press Any key" just press any key on your keyboard. Just the let the Windows Setup files be loaded.
4. Press "R" when you the screen below





5. Press 1 then Enter
6. In the command prompt type format c:/q then press Enter

Note: This will format the drive c: or wipe out the information in the hard drive

Follow these steps and ia sure you will be able to boot by yourself:-
1)Change the BIOS boot order so the CD or DVD drive is listed first. Some computers are already configured this way but many are not.
2)If the CD or DVD drive is not first in the boot order, your PC will start "normally" (i.e. boot from your hard drive) without even looking at what might be in your disc drive.
3)Insert your bootable CD or bootable DVD in your disc drive.
4)Restart your computer.
5)Watch for a Press any key to boot from CD or DVD... message.
6)When booting to a Windows setup CD/DVD and many other bootable discs, you may be prompted with a message to press a key to boot to the disc. To boot to the CD or DVD, you'll need to press any key on your keyboard (like the space bar) within the few seconds that the message is on the screen.
7)If you do nothing, your computer will check for boot information on the next boot device in the list in BIOS which will probably be your hard drive.
8)Some bootable CDs and DVDs do not prompt for a key press and will start immediately.
Your computer should now boot from the CD or DVD disc.

#1 Use windows backup in Windows 7 to create a full system backup of the OS to DVD or a removable drive. (And well as any data on any other partition)
#2 Repartition drive to roughtly 50 50 split
#3 Install XP to partition 1, Install 7 to partition 2 then restore the backup of 7 to partition 2,

Hi there.

For this process you will need:
1) The hard drive you want the operating system on.
2) The operating system disk (Windows, Linux, etc, depending on your os choice)
3) A CD/DVD drive.

Firstly you will need to enter the BIOS on startup by pressing the Delete key repeatedly as your system starts up. In the BIOS you need to locate the boot disk priority section. You need to set priority 1 to your CD/DVD drive and priority 2 to the hard drive you wish to install the operating system to. Once this is done save changes to the BIOS and exit. Your system should now restart and on boot-up it should display a message "Insert bootable disk" or something like that. This is where you put in the operating systems install disk into your CD/DVD drive. Once it is in restart your system. Now your PC should boot up and ask you to press "Enter" to boot form the CD/DVD. Press enter to proceed. The setup should now begin, just follow the steps given by the setup wizard. Once the setup is finished and your PC reboots and on startup you get the same message about pressing "Enter" to begin setup just do nothing. Your PC should then switch automatically to your newly installed operating system and boot into it. Once your PC is fully booted into your operating system of choice remove the setup disk.

Slasher_X

hi

Boot from your XP install CD and select the option to format the C:
drive. If you don't have an install CD, use the "System Restore" CD or
DVD that came with your system. These restore your system to factory
settings. There're still other ways to format your C: drive, but
without either an install CD or restore one, you'll end up with an
unusable system after formatting the C: drive.
If you use the XP install CD, you'll need to be SURE you have all the
drivers for things like your DVD/CD drive, NIC, video, audio, modem, etc.

Hi usavahe.
Booting from CD should be possible.
1) When the laptop first starts to power up, repeatedly press the F12 key. This should bring you to a screen that lets you select the boot device.
2) For the Satellite, it may show icons across the bottom of the screen. You want the one that looks like a CD.
3) It should the start to boot from the Windows CD (if it is indeed a bootable disc) and you will see the message "press any key to boot from cd".
4) Press any key you want on the keyboard and the Windows CD installation process should begin

Hope that helps

Chose boot sequence to boot directly from the HDD . Also check if the Hard Disk is OK by connecting it to another PC. Check too that the power cables are snug tight and none of the pins are bent in the IDE slot. Now try booting first in safe mode & if successful go ahead and boot normally....sodeep

That machine is too underpowared to run xp pro.
Windows XP Media Center Edition
1.6 GHz CPU, 256MB Ram, and DirectX 9 hardware-accelerated GPU
you may get it to run but it is going to be dead slow. you will be waiting forever to load any apps with a processor under a gig, and less than 512 mhz of memory, it may work for emulation, but that's even questionable. I don't want to aggrvate you but that config is a decade old. Vista for instance needs at least 2 gigs of ram and a dualcore to run right. sorry bud, if you are dead set on it, the only thing you coula do is juice up the memory, to whatever the board is rated to take, or I would run windows 98, peace

try to change your master as the 300gig then secondary master 40gig then your slave 20gig. then check it to the bios