Im having trouble with a mates machine, im trying to re-install Win XP for him.

A simple task, but for some reason setup won't let me format his boot drive as anything other than RAW.

It sees the boot drive, but says there is no bootable partition on it, so I press C to create a new partition, but the usual option of formatting to NTFS or Quick NTFS format doesn't appear, just a box to enter the size of the partition, which it always creates as RAW.

Anybody got any quick ideas? Ive even killdisked the entire fecking drive but the problem persists.

It won't be the XP disk, I used it myself on another machine the day earlier with no problems.

His system specs:

DFI LP NF4
A64 3200+ Venice
1Gb Samsung PC3200
200Gb Maxtor IDE HDD

Yeah don't bother selecting to create a partition, as far as i'm aware it doesn't really do anything, just select to install onto the raw format, XP wil then ask you to choose a format type, choose quick format and off you go.

Every time I try to do that, it tells me its not a Win XP compatible partition...

I see, this is a conumdrum worthy of Carol Vorderman, Have you tried swaering at it? I always fid F'ing and blinding at my laptop makeis it perfrom incredible feats that itwould never normally be capable off, like booting first time.

But seriously, I would first rip the hard disk out and stick it in your rig and try the installation again. I was installing XP on 3 identicle computers I was using in school for Vocational ICT and one of them just refused to complete an installation no matter what I did so in the end i Just ended up stickign the hard disk in another machine and installing fr om there.

Unfortunatly your rigs are sufficietly different for windows to haev a paddy and through all its toys out of the pram and not work so you'll then need to wipe the OS using the other machine and then try re-installing!

Have faith, i'm a student!

Quote: Originally Posted by Reza I see, this is a conumdrum worthy of Carol Vorderman, Have you tried swaering at it? I always fid F'ing and blinding at my laptop makeis it perfrom incredible feats that itwould never normally be capable off, like booting first time.

Dave, the only reason your laptop ever works is because I regularly pronounce it dead. And because of that, it decides to be unpredictable and pretty darn hardc0re and actually start working again...

Thanks for the usual pointless thread banter guys, problem now solved.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dex Thanks for the usual pointless thread banter guys, problem now solved.

Isnt this why we love this website ???

Quote: Originally Posted by Dex Thanks for the usual pointless thread banter guys, problem now solved.

Hey I actually provided official advice, how did ya fix it?