I was going to set up this machine to dual-boot, with Windows XP Home (SP1) on one partition, and Fedora Core 5 on another.  

When I boot up the PC with the Windows XP CD in the drive, it BRINGS up the "Press any key to boot from CD" message like it should.  I press the any key and it flashes a message about detecting system stuff.  After this, the screen goes black and I get no install, no nothing.  It just sits there forever.

What's wrong with it?  The drive itself is working fine as far as I can tell.

System:
Pentium4 2.53Ghz
512mb Dual-Channel DDR RAM
MSI Mobo... VIA chipset, can't rememeber the model number
NVidia GeForce4 5200 128mb video
one CD/RW drive, one IDE HD, one SATA HDDid this machine ever work correctly? Are you trying to load XP on the SATA drive?  If so, you need drivers for that.I don't see how it matters where I'm trying to install Windows, as it doesn't even get that far before it hangs.  But for the record, I would be trying to install it on the IDE HD (SATA drive is for storage).

Yes it has worked previously, this machine was previously running Windows XP.  It now has a new IDE HD, and so I need to install Windows XP on it.

Put in the CD, boot the computer.  Computer prompts to press any key, I do so.  Screen goes black and hangs, that's it.Are both drives seen correctly in the BIOS? I am concerned that this is not set up right so this is why it does matter.Oh yes, the BIOS sees the drives just fine.  Nothing's changed since the last time Windows was on this machine (that I know of).

I hope it isn't a hardware ISSUE of some sort.mundungu.....  Perhaps a redundant question , but have you changed the boot sequence to 1st boot CD -Rom ?


dl65  You say there is a new HDD in there? have you tried unplugging that and trying the setup, just to see if you get past the black screen or not?


ViperYes, unplugging the new IDE HD, everything goes SMOOTHLY.  Except, of course, for the "You have no hard drives" message...

Does this mean it's bad? It works perfectly fine under Linux.  And if so, how would I go about using my SATA HD?  I need drivers for it, but I don't have a floppy drive at the moment.  Something tells me I may need one...

EDIT: I found the culprit... apperently Fedora Core 5 did something nasty to the MBR when it installed GRUB (boot loader), which would stall out the windows hardware detection.  I just fixed my MBR and it's working great, I suppose this problem has little to do with windows You're always ahead to load Windows first and then any other O/S, because MS does not play well with others.