Can not boot from CD Rom to install Windows XP

Does the screen at any time display the message:
Press any key to boot from CD

Try hitting escape during the MB splash screen to envoke the boot menu.

What you must do is press Delete or some other key when the PC is booting up to access your BIOS settings. Somehwere in these settings there should be something that says Boot Order or something like that. Here you will see your devices listen in an order similar to Hard Disk, Floppy Drive, CD Rom, and Netowrk device. It might not say exactly that  but you get the idea. What you must do is move the CD Rom part of it to the top. Once you do this reboot. Upon reboot the message Press any key to boot from CD... at this time you should press any button :p. Then you're set.

Sorry, I didn't see the question. :(

Does your CD boot when you remove the HD? Also make sure you have disabled network boot, as this is the other message you get.

is This board have onboard SiS900 NICs.  The BIOS has a network boot option ?
Q_20841125.html

>> "Novell Netware Ready Firmware V1.00 (940809) C etc. Then RPL-ROM-ADR: 0011 5BC5 8927 RPL - ROM - IRQ:5 RPL - ROM - FFC: 5."

You only get this msg when you have failed installation of Novell or have attempt to install Novell previously.
You will need to do a low-level format via DOS base. Afterwhich, you may proceed to run setup for WinXP.

Cheers

"Novell Netware Ready Firmware V1.00 (940809) C etc. Then RPL-ROM-ADR: 0011 5BC5 8927 RPL - ROM - IRQ:5 RPL - ROM - FFC: 5."

looks like your network card is trying to boot before the cd. It does NOT indicate Netware was installed.  

look for cabling problems with the hard drive and cdrom. I do not recommend using cable select in this case, make sure they are both master, hard drive being on primary, cd on secondary.. Are they showing up in the bios screen properly?  does the cdrom boot if you disconnect the hard drive? (Agreeing with other suggestions here.)

cd could be a scratched disk... is it a copy?

check other bootable disks, if you do not have any such, get Damn Small Linux, google that download it from a mirror, burn to a cd, try it.

In this case boot order may not matter. Even if network boot is enabled and first, when it cannot boot from network it moves to the next device. If it's giving the error and then NOT booting into the current OS (presuming there is one) then it's trying to boot from CD and cannot because of a non-bootable or damaged CD.

If there is no OS installed, try to boot from floppy. make a set of windows xp boot disks (6 floppies), boot from those then try to install off the CD

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Correction:  The OS was Windows NT.  I have went in to change the boot order. I've also manually choose to boot from the CD Rom by pushing F8 during startup and pulling up the boot menu.

keep trying differned cd's and different drives, I think you will get it running.

did you attempt to follow one of the suggestions above where you disconnect the hard drive from the system.  It might be that the CD rom drive you have is not bootable.

Have you attempted to create the six boot floppies as mentioned by  rpalmeira22 and boot the system using them?

We do not know nor can we see what happens when you attempt to boot from the CD, you need to be out eyes and provide details as to what happens when you attempt to boot from CD.  Any messages?  When you elected through F8 to boot from CD, what happened?  What message if any were displayed.

Depending on the system you have, there might be a bios boot loader (escape, f12, etc.)

What happens if you select CD-rom from that point?

The OS is actually Windows NT.  
I've done the following:
Booted up with a W98 boot disk.  I didn't know what the heck I was doing with that so I didn't get anywhere.  I had an old hard drive with Windows 98 on it and I put it in and the computer started up.  There's no CD Rom.  I tried to find it and it's not there.  I've changed the CD Rom and the IDE Cable and still no luck. I wonder if the Motherboard is messed up.  When I go into Bios, I can see the CD Rom in the setup.  Does anyone have any ideas as to why I can see the CD Rom in the bios, but the OS can't find it once it's starting up?

I put a new IDE cable on the CD rom and put it onto the IDE 0 spot and the Hard Drive IDE Cable onto the IDE 1 spot on the motherboard.  The system booted up and runs fine.  Now, when I open up My Computer, I can see the D drive, but it says "D:\ is not accessable. The device is not ready". When I go to System Proproperties, I can see the CD Rom under CD Rom on the Device Manager tab.  When I double click on it, it says the device is working properly.
Dang Computers!

As to why windows 98 is not seeing the CDrom, might it be because it lacks the drivers for the CDROM?

Right click on the D drive and hit eject, does the CD rom open or gets ejected?

IDE 0,1? Primary master/secondary master?

If it can see the device that's a start. try to reinstall the driver for it. also some older CD drives i've played with have trouble readed burned CD rather than professionally pressed ones so if it's really old and you have a copy of winxp you burned from ISO it may not work.  If you have it booting to 98 though, see if you can get it to boot into winxp setup from the floppy and install off the CD that way, rather than through 98.

Looks like your motherboard doesn't like CDs.

Change the boot up sequence so that only floppy discs boot up.

Next get yerself a win98se boot disk from www.bootdisk.com

Load up from the boot disk and format the drive.

Next, change the boot up sequence to CDROM, FOLLOWED BY HARD DISK.

Insert your XP CDROM and you should see the prompts to start installation...

If not, either your CDROM is messed, or your motherboard is messed, or you messed up the BIOS settings ;)

Ibraheem

Ah, just read the rest of the posts, looks like your CDROM drive is messed then ;) If you got a spare one, swap it out and see if it recognises it.

If your XP CDROM is original though, it should show up just fine...

time for a new cd reader

my office sees them die after random lengths of use, but you should be able to get a couple of years of use out of them.

Doesn't seem to matter if you used it much, with the exception of kid's games, which can burn out a cdrom fairly quickly.

Newer ones seem junkier than older ones.

Get a sony ;)

I have both a Sony DVD Rom and a Lite-on CD Rom.  I don't think it's the reader.  I'll do some more swapping and make sure.

First make sure that your harddisk is really empty, by removing any bootable partition from it
This can be done by booting from a floppydisk (e.g win95 or win98), suitable self extracting images can be found at www.bootdisk.com

to remove harddisk partitions, use the fdisk utility and remove all (active) partitions, if an OS other than win95 or win98 was installed partitions may be marked as non-dos. finally rewrite the master boot record (fdisk /mbr)

When done (reboot needed, don't forget to take out the floppy!) try booting from the XP CDROM. As there are no more bootable partitions available, there is no other choice than to boot from the XP CD.

If you still receive NTLDR errors, it's probably a faulty CD.
If you receive a bios message (something like No operating system found, press a key to reboot) either the CDrom drive can't read the CD's bootrecord or the CD media is faulty
(Some older CDROM drives have difficulties booting from a CD Recordable!)

It looks as if my Windows Install CD is the culprit.  I used a different one (to start it, not to finish) and that seemed to be it.
ppfoong stated that so I guess he/she should get the points.  Do I do assign the points somehow?

I mean to say: Do I assign the points?

You can assign to one individual or to several depending on whether you thought their advice/suggestions were useful in your search to resolve your issue.

If the issue for which the question was opened is no longer, you should close the question an award points to an individual or a group whose suggestions you found useful on your way to a solution.

Beyond that, I am uncertain as to what you are asking.