Member Avatar for Loopah

I was running Windows XP Pro when I signed up for the trial edition of Windows XP 64-bit Pro at microsoft.com. I downloaded the ISO and booted up the PC with that. I proceeded to install my RAID/SATA disk drivers on installation before formatting. After I installed those drivers I started the reformatting on a fresh partition. It got done formatting only to show me an error message saying that it couldn't complete formatting because of an error on the hard disk. I thought "GREAT!". So my only option was to restart and now when my PC restarts it goes through all the BIOS readings and stuff and then gets to a black screen and sits there. It doesn't say it's loading from a CD or anything at all so the only thing I can do is turn it off. Please help with this. I would rather not have to take it in to a shop. I am heading to bed now, I will check responses tomorrow. Please help. Specs in profile.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by JANINE

Dani AI

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For — prioritized, practical checks that follow the advice already offered by and , with corrections and safe next steps.

  1. Inspect BIOS first. Power down, unplug the PSU, then clear CMOS (either remove the coin cell for ~30–60 seconds or use the clear-jumper). After power-up, enter BIOS and confirm the motherboard actually detects the hard drive and the optical drive, and set a CD/USB device first in the boot order. A drive that does not appear in BIOS usually indicates a hardware/cable/controller issue, not the OS.

  2. Hardware basics: reseat or replace SATA/data and power cables, try a different SATA port, and disconnect any add-on RAID/SATA controller or extra drives. If a separate RAID card was used, remove it and connect the drive to the motherboard controller to simplify diagnosis.

  3. Boot a known-good rescue medium (Linux Live CD/USB or Windows PE). Use it to:

    • See whether the disk and partitions are visible.
    • Run SMART/self-test to check disk health.
    • Copy important files off the disk before doing destructive fixes.
      If Windows recovery is used, try chkdsk /r and, if needed, fixmbr / fixboot from the Recovery Console.

  4. Driver/installation notes: on legacy XP installs, third-party SATA/RAID drivers must be loaded during setup (F6) or provided via a slipstreamed installer. Also note that a 64-bit Windows requires a 64-bit CPU — contrary to — so a 64-bit build will not run on a 32-bit-only processor.

If SMART reports physical failure, replace the drive. If the disk is healthy but the installer still fails, either perform a clean reinstall with the correct driver procedure or attach the disk to another PC/USB-SATA adapter to rescue data before repartitioning.

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Member Avatar for ShaneMcP

Worst you would need is a new HD, but if its not booting to the CD or floppy, try turning off the CPU unplugging the power from your cpu, take out the cmos battery and put it back in. Then start it up again.

p.s. You shouldnt be installing Windows XP 64-bit on a non 64-bit system. Thats just never a good idea.

Hope this helps

Shane McP

Member Avatar for JANINE

Worst you would need is a new HD, but if its not booting to the CD or floppy, try turning off the CPU unplugging the power from your cpu, take out the cmos battery and put it back in. Then start it up again.

p.s. You shouldnt be installing Windows XP 64-bit on a non 64-bit system. Thats just never a good idea.

Hope this helps

Shane McP

its not reccomended but it will just about run on a 32bit system at that systems speed. i havent tried it but i know ppl that have.

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