Re-installing xp home dilemma

Hi, heres me: alienware area 51 mobile desktop. win xp home sp2, the machine
came with a xp home installation disk. not the recovery type medium. I have a
seperate driver disk. Im trying to reinstall clean cause its been a while and
I have somne issues like freezing and crashing. some say it could be from
using registry cleaners. anyway. I boot from the disk into recovery console
and type format C: /fs:ntfs and it will not accept the command it says bad
command or something.
So... I try another approach I boot from the disk at the window with the
options recovery install or setup xp now I go to setup xp now and find myself
at the screen that shows the installed partions and theres 4 entries at the
bottom all of which says "no disk installed: or something. If I hit the arrow
key it crashes blue screen.

Note: I have 2 HD's installed and one external usb one. my C drive is master
and D is slave.

anyone?

Greg

Starvoyager wrote:
> Hi, heres me: alienware area 51 mobile desktop. win xp home sp2,
> the machine came with a xp home installation disk. not the recovery
> type medium. I have a seperate driver disk. Im trying to reinstall
> clean cause its been a while and I have somne issues like freezing
> and crashing. some say it could be from using registry cleaners.
> anyway. I boot from the disk into recovery console and type format
> C: /fs:ntfs and it will not accept the command it says bad command
> or something.
> So... I try another approach I boot from the disk at the window
> with the options recovery install or setup xp now I go to setup xp
> now and find myself at the screen that shows the installed partions
> and theres 4 entries at the bottom all of which says "no disk
> installed: or something. If I hit the arrow key it crashes blue
> screen.
>
> Note: I have 2 HD's installed and one external usb one. my C drive
> is master and D is slave.
....
If you have everything backed up and are trying to do a clean
installation...

You boot from the CD (set BIOS to boot first from CD drive, press any key to
boot from CD, etc) and then you do not hit any 'R' keys at all. You are no
doing a repair or recovery - you are doing an installation. If it does not
see your disks when it gets to the part where it asks you what partition to
install upon - they did not send you a CD that has the controller driver
integrated into it. You will need to use the F6 method of install (google -
F6 and Windows XP installation) and have a floppy diskette/floppy drive to
use during the process with the proper driver for your system.

--
Shenan Stanley
MS-MVP
--
How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

I believe you have sata drives, perhaps you need to F6 early in the
installation to load sata/raid drivers from floppy
PS Disconnect your usb whilst setting up

"Starvoyager" <Starvoyager@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:882E77FB-EB76-41C1-A24F-B5827A2B6D38@microsoft.com...
> Hi, heres me: alienware area 51 mobile desktop. win xp home sp2, the
> machine
> came with a xp home installation disk. not the recovery type medium. I
> have a
> seperate driver disk. Im trying to reinstall clean cause its been a while
> and
> I have somne issues like freezing and crashing. some say it could be from
> using registry cleaners. anyway. I boot from the disk into recovery
> console
> and type format C: /fs:ntfs and it will not accept the command it says bad
> command or something.
> So... I try another approach I boot from the disk at the window with the
> options recovery install or setup xp now I go to setup xp now and find
> myself
> at the screen that shows the installed partions and theres 4 entries at
> the
> bottom all of which says "no disk installed: or something. If I hit the
> arrow
> key it crashes blue screen.
>
> Note: I have 2 HD's installed and one external usb one. my C drive is
> master
> and D is slave.
>
> anyone?
>
> Greg
>

Earlier I should have said that I have 3 HD's 2 onboard and 1 exertnal USB.
I have C: 60 gigs with xp on it and D: 100 gigs then the usb HD 80 gigs. I
did unplug it when I tried to reinstall and I do not have any drivers on
floppy disk.
Ive never needed that before when re-installing.

thanks for reply Greg

"DL" wrote:

> I believe you have sata drives, perhaps you need to F6 early in the
> installation to load sata/raid drivers from floppy
> PS Disconnect your usb whilst setting up
>
> "Starvoyager" <Starvoyager@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:882E77FB-EB76-41C1-A24F-B5827A2B6D38@microsoft.com...
> > Hi, heres me: alienware area 51 mobile desktop. win xp home sp2, the
> > machine
> > came with a xp home installation disk. not the recovery type medium. I
> > have a
> > seperate driver disk. Im trying to reinstall clean cause its been a while
> > and
> > I have somne issues like freezing and crashing. some say it could be from
> > using registry cleaners. anyway. I boot from the disk into recovery
> > console
> > and type format C: /fs:ntfs and it will not accept the command it says bad
> > command or something.
> > So... I try another approach I boot from the disk at the window with the
> > options recovery install or setup xp now I go to setup xp now and find
> > myself
> > at the screen that shows the installed partions and theres 4 entries at
> > the
> > bottom all of which says "no disk installed: or something. If I hit the
> > arrow
> > key it crashes blue screen.
> >
> > Note: I have 2 HD's installed and one external usb one. my C drive is
> > master
> > and D is slave.
> >
> > anyone?
> >
> > Greg
> >
>
>
>