This is driving me crazy, i cant reinstall windows on this crappy HP machine, i tried everything i can think of but i cant get it to boot from the cd.... any ideas?

 

ummm aren't you in pc support?

why don't you just format the drive first?

 

Reboot!

 

bad CD? Bad CD drive?

If you know the CD is good, try replacing the drive. You can get one now for like $30 at Frys.

 

when my wife's HP laptop died it acted the same way.

tried to boot from disc and it would start the install for about 2-5 files then hang...reboot and try again...
ended up being an error on the HD in the boot sector.
got a new HD and a external USB enclosure for the original HD and everything was golden.
was even able to retreive the files from the original HD via the USB link.
no files lost, but all the apps had to be reinstalled.
which in the end was okay since i got to get rid of a bunch of HP preinstalled junk that was on her laptop that didn't need to be there.

 

I am in support and ive never seen this before, changed the boot order in the bios and disabled the HD so it could only possibly boot from floppy or cd, it just says "no operating system found" it still boots fine into windows but its overrun with viruses. like i said, ive tried everything possible i can think of, it refuses to boot from cd or floppy and both are functioning

 

cant format the drive unless i can boot off a floppy with the format util on it

 

Try wiggling the power cord!

 

You've made sure that there is not a disk in your floppy drive right?

 

www.bootdisk.com

 

of course, i tried the cd first but it seemed like it just ignored it so then i tried the dos floppy and again seems like it just ignores it & tries to boot of HDD

 

So then have you tried a known good cd drive? It sounds like a drive problem, but if not it could be the cable (less likely) or a bad controller on the board (unless you're running the cd as a slave to the hdd, which would mostly rule out the controller as being bad since the hdd works)

 

i know how to make a boot disk, the computer ignores it

 

Both the cdrom drive & floppy drive work fine in windows, it just refuses to boot from them- im starting to think its something built into the bios that wont allow you to boot from anything but hp CD but it should allow it to boot from floppy

 

I give up... i think its