Community archive

Ask something
Discussion Locked

Trouble installing OS on HP

0 helpful
4 replies

by starfishsneezing

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I am currently working on a Hewlett Packard Pavilion XE783. This desktop had Win XP Pro on it but I formatted the HD so I could install Win 2K. When I am installing 2K I of course begin installing the four floppy disks, but when I begin to install disk three it stops and gives me a message about a missing atapi.sys file. This has never happened to me before and this HP is the first PC I've had give me this message. I tried making a new disk three but that still gave me the same message. Does this HP desktop require another file to be added to disk three? Where can I get the file? How should I install the file? etc.

4 replies

by voldar

To fix your problem, use a W98 bootdisk, and run fdisk, delete the partitions and then rebuild them.
One question: Why bootdisks? Don't you have the CD-ROM of Windows 2000? You can start the installation from it too.

by hal 9000

And FDISK the HDD then alter the BIOS to boot from CD, HDD,A and load from there you should not have a problem. I've only needed these boot diske when loading a computer with a addin SCSI interface which isn't supported under the BIOS and this is where I find them helpful but I never format the HDD before attempting to install 2K as the install process does thsi for you anyway and has since NT 3.5.

Incidently after you've got 2K installed don't forget to reset the BIOS back to boot from A, C, SCSI.

by jardinier

You mention "four floppy discs." Is your whole Win 2K on floppies, or do you mean "four CD-ROMs?"

While I have never heard of a full edition of 2K on floppies, if this is the case then you are stuffed because once a system floppy becomes defective that's usually the end of it. However, if it is a system floppy, you can try running "scandisk" on it on another computer.

If you actually mean "four CD-ROMs," then refer to the advice in the previous two postings.

by hal 9000

Which prove very usefull if you have SCSI drives that aren't on an onboard SCSI controller as those startup disks will setup the system for an install from the CD. It is all on the CD and something that I miss on both XP and 2003 as neither of these have this option.

M$ claims that it is no longer necessaary but recently I had a rush job that required 2003 on an all SCSi drive unit and I was supplied the wrong M'Board. Normally I would have just returned the M'Board for the right one but as there where none I was done a deal with a 3 channel PCI SCSI card but I had to fit a IDE CD ROM to install the OS and then everything worked fine. But if there had of been the option of making a startup set it would have been much easier and faster.

This discussion is closed to new replies.