Hi everyone,

I am trying to fix a pc for a friend. He has a HP Pavillion with a SATA HD (1) and SATA Lightscribe DVD Writer (2).

System is set to Boot from DVD first then HD.

The HD is the Primary Master and the DVD is the Primary Slave.

Installation of XP Pro begins but at first reboot the installation process starts all over again rather than picking up from where it left off.

Just to make sure I have taken the HD out an formatted (NTFS) it in my own machine to make sure it is empty. I can write and save to the HD while it is in my PC without any problems.

Does any one know what is going on and have some solutions?

Hi,
Ensure that you do not touch his PC during the reboot!!!
Not sure if it will help but remove the motherboard battery for a few minutes and replace, set BIOS and try again.
If you are still having problems, try installing windows on his HD in your PC with no other drive in yours. Then replace it in his and see if it will boot.

I'll give it a try. Thanks for the suggestion Bob

You cannot install on your machine then put the disk in his machine if both computers are different like AMD and Intel. You get BSOD.

You need to set HDD as Primary Master and CD/DVD as Secondary Master, then in bios set boot CD as first selection.

It wont boot on that machine. XP doesnt like SATA, especially SATA optical drives. Try slipstreaming his chipset drivers into the cd image using Nlite, then it *should* work. Alternatively, you may have some success by changing it to IDE Emulation mode in the BIOS.

You can also put the SATA drivers on floppy and during XP installation at the "F6 Prompt, Load Additional Drivers" put the floppy in.

I dont think it will even get that far if its booting off a SATA Optical drive.

The same problem exists in vista (only solved by SP1 or hotfix integration)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928253

Hi,
I have heard this story so many times and I have done so many times what you and others claim to be impossible. I have put a drive from another totally different machine in a PC and booted. As it sets up, it finds all the different devices and loads them, just like plug and pray (play).
True, I have not done it with every different type of machine, but I have done it with many and I have never had a rejection.
Even if it comes up with some message that it will not work it may then be able to load Windows in his machine.
I have an internet cafe with 20 running PCs and I have several different types of PC due to break downs and replacements. I do not know what is not allowed to work so I just swap hard drives when I need to and I have not had one play up.

It doesnt work if they have different HALs. Swapping between machines which support APM and those that dont, or between SMP machines and non-smp machines, for example. If they use compatible HALs then it should be fine.

Bob_180_Bob - As I say, you cannot load from an AMD to put in a Pentium but you can use AMD to AMD or Pentium to Pentium. As long as both machines are compatible CPU you can do this task.

Intel Celeron does have its its own issues that might also give you problems between AMD and Pentium.