XP won't load

Newbie Forum
#1

I have an old Dell motherboard that won’t run anything newer than XP. I wanted to load XP on a computer with this motherboard and use it in the shop where I work so I could bring home me W10 computer as the shop has so much dust and grime that it hard on computers.

Problem, when I try to load XP on the board, and the board was working when I removed it from a computer and replaced it with a sata board, is that it goes through the load and then says that it will restart and finished installing XP. But when the computer restarts, before the BIOS screen the screen says "Press any key to boot from CD…_ and never goes any farther. The underline is a blink cursor.

I have tried an XP Pro ISO that I have used before, and an XP Home Edition. Then I tried a Dell XP install disk I bought years ago. It does the same with all three disks

Could anyone tell me what in the world is going on. Thanks.

#2

Two reasons springs to mind:

  1. Hard disk is not in the BIOS boot options (excluded from boot)/SATA is excluded from boot.
  2. If it is a PATA (40-pin) disk, the jumper may be set to ‘Slave’ and not ‘Master’
#3

[QUOTE=Xercus;2779410]Two reasons springs to mind:

  1. Hard disk is not in the BIOS boot options (excluded from boot)/SATA is excluded from boot.
  2. If it is a PATA (40-pin) disk, the jumper may be set to ‘Slave’ and not ‘Master’[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the reply. In BIOS the HD is recognized as Primary Master.

I set the HD to Select and Master with the same results.

#4

If boot priority and all is OK the only other thing I can think of is to try another IDE cable if available.

What happens if you tap [F12] at the boot screen (or the equivalent key for your motherboard) to select boot device manually?

#5

[QUOTE=Xercus;2779426]If boot priority and all is OK the only other thing I can think of is to try another IDE cable if available.

What happens if you tap [F12] at the boot screen (or the equivalent key for your motherboard) to select boot device manually?[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the help, board not loaded and working. Don’t know why, I got mad on day and just started doing stuff and suddenly it loaded and now works fine.

Sort of like and older man that taught me most of what I know about mechanics said back in the 60’s. I you can’t find the problem, get a hammer. :smiley:

#6

Sort of like and older man that taught me most of what I know about mechanics said back in the 60’s. I you can’t find the problem, get a hammer.

I know that Guy , very well indeed :iagree: :bigsmile:

#7

Yeah and if that don’t work you need a bigger hammer.