Won't load Windows Setup

[Aziz88]

Hi anyone who's interested in helping me :)

Here's the deal, down and dirty:

Changed around the sizes of some partitions, then rebooted and installed a linux distro on a seperate partition. Went to go into XP Home (SP2, or course), and it first told me autocheck could not be found, then gave me a BSOD saying "STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}" etc etc. I believe the issue needs to be resolved by repairing windows installation. However, I've tried using several different Windows CDs (Burnt copy, legit copy, even a recovery environment only copy), and they all hang after I "press any key to boot from CD". It sits at the blank screen with the flash underscore forever (as far as I can tell, in this case I think 20 minutes is forever).

The thing that baffles me is that other CDs work - Fedora 8 KDE Live CD, Ubuntu 6.04 Live CD, Ultimate Boot CD, Emergency Boot CD.

I'm a loss.

Some more information:

My partition layout is as follows (somewhat):

boot partition ~80MB - primary, active
extended partition:
-- linux-swap, 1GB
-- ext3, 10GB
ntfs partition ~15GB - primary, Windows XP Home SP2 installed here
ntfs partition ~30GB - primary, all my files are stored here

I think I should also note that I just reinstalled Windows last week and have been updating since then. I did do an update before my last shutdown (I shutdown when Partition magic prompted me to do so - and then booted right to Fedora install).

I have an Inspiron 6000 and it's about 2 and a half years old.

I've exhausted myself at this point. If anyone has run into these problems before, please let me know. I'm looking into getting a new laptop soon otherwise :(

Thanks in advance
- Anthony Aziz

[jbennet]

you are supposed to defrag + chkdisk the XP before reising to stop problems like this.

[Aziz88]

Thanks for the suggestion for next time. However I'm still in a rut, and I'm not sure if that has anything to do with being able to load Windows XP Setup.

[caperjack]

i had similar problem after i installed ubuntu on a hdd with one partition ,when i went to format and install winxp it would not see any winxp cd i had either,but it did see my copy of win2000 so i partitioned and formated the drive ,canceled the 2000 install and rebooted the computer with my winxp in and it then seen the xp.I have used partition magic once or twice,, but never on my main drive ,don't know it well enough to make any suggestions though .

[jbennet]

make sure that "antivirus" or "mbr protection" or "boot sector protection" is OFF in the BIOS. It prevents proper bootloader installation.

[Aziz88]

Thanks caperjack and jbennet.

I will look in my BIOS first. The only thing is that I can boot fine (I'm running Fedora 8 right now of a differet paritiion). My only problem is that it won't boot from Windows CD and only that CD. Otherwise I'll have to see if I can get a 2000 or maybe even a Vista cd. I don't want to parition my whole hard driver (or even my windows partition), but we'll see what has to be done.

I'm looking into a new laptop anyways too =/

Any other suggestion will be welcome.

Sorry, caperjack, another thing, when you said it wouldn't 'see' the CD, do you me you couldn't boot from it, or that it wouldnt even give you the option to boot. I do get the message 'press any key to boot from CD-ROM', and I do that, and I get a simple white text on black screen message 'Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration' (such as you would normally see in the blue Windows Setup loading screen).

[caperjack]

Sorry, caperjack, another thing, when you said it wouldn't 'see' the CD, do you me you couldn't boot from it, or that it wouldnt even give you the option to boot. I do get the message 'press any key to boot from CD-ROM', and I do that, and I get a simple white text on black screen message 'Setup is inspecting your hardware configuration' (such as you would normally see in the blue Windows Setup loading screen).

yeah thats what i got ,when it happened to me

[Aziz88]

I'll be trying that tonight then. I'm going to try to install 2000 on an other partitition since i have no desire to go through installing windows again (and yet again when my new laptop arrives :S)