firstly sorry bean1620, but anyway do you want to keep any of the data on your HDD ? if not you can simpy set the first boot device to CD-ROM (in the BIOS) then connect your HDD and when XP CD starts booting you will be promted to "Press any key to boot from CD" press a key and when and follow on screen instructions to install XP SP2 if you do want data on your HDD, boot from XP SP2 CD and when prompted to enter recovery console of repair press "R" then select the XP installation you wish to fix (with the arrow keys then press enter to login) then type "disable mup" then reboot EDIT: Emachines are well known for having under powered PSU's and crap power switches, so at the first opertunity replace the PSU a good one would be this but personally i have a Tagen TG330-UO1, but i'm on a very tight budget
when exactly did XP halt trying to get to recovery console or on reboot (when during boot) does it get past POST (pc beeps)
it did not give me a chance to enter recovery consel, it halted when it was initializing the install it went through everything untill windows setup then halted. I get no beeps and when i hooked up the hard drive during bios it reconized the hard drive but wtill wont boot past the emachine logo when i start it with everything hooked up
if you're willing to reformat, Try this. download a boot up disk from here extract the files to a floppy disk. then restart your computer, go into bios and set floppy into first boot. then press any button to boot from floppy. do "fdisk" and format everything until you can't see any numbers in the drives besides 0. Now you should be able to install XP. I've had this problem with my computer and this was the only way it worked. EDIT: it doesn't matter if it's a win 98 boot up disk.
If you have the hard drive hooked up, but not the optical drive, does it boot? If not, I'd say there's something very wrong with that hard drive. If it does, you may have a power supply that's just loosing it's grunt. A good 300W Antec, or similar should do the job just fine.
yeah the hard drive is f**ked i got a new one and the it now boots all the way to "starting windows setup" then stalls , i am booting from a burnt copy of Windows xp not sure if it is sp2 or not. I also tried fdisking the disk and that did nothing . I also hooked up a new power supply 300 watt amd that did nothing . I have a new mobo ordered from ebay ($17) so Im going to try that and other suggestions would gretley be appreciated!!
