XP clean install gone wrong

Had big problems with Sony Vaio and decided to do clean install of XP. During the procedure - after everything had been wiped - at the point where it was trying to copy the installation files to the newly formatted partition, something went horribly wrong! It couldn't read a lot of the files from the disc and to cut a long story short I ended up having to abort the installation.

Now when I turn the laptop on I just get a black screen with a flashing white line in the top left hand corner. If I put a disc in it does nothing so I suppose it just doesn't have anything in it to tell it what to do.

I have a XP disc, Sony Application Recovery CD and Sony System recovery CD - nothing works.

This is an old machine and I was only trying to clean it up for a friend for occasional use. Can anyone help me to get it working? I'm not an expert and I just hope I haven't done something that can't be fixed.

 

Let me just google that for you

http://tinyurl.com/24gxlsf

 

Thanks but I have all the instructions for performing a clean install. My problem seems to be that having aborted the procedure I can´t do anything. Even if I put the XP disc back in I still just get a black screen with the flashing line. I need to know how to get it to recognise the cd.

 

Have you set your bios to boot from the cd, if so the xp should start to install itself.

Also make sure in your bios, you have EIDE/COMPATIBILITY MODE selected and not SATA/AHCI mode , as Xp does not have SATA driver and you will be a crash when installing.

 

Hello. Unfortunately I can't seem to get to the BIOS! I thought that I could switch the machine on and press F2 but no luck. Before I messed up, when switching on the SONY screen came up first and I guess that this is where I could press f2 but now I don't even get the Sony screen. In fact when I press any key I just get a beep. Any more ideas? Grateful for your help.

 

Even if you physically removed the hard drive, you could still get into the bios, so i dont know what you have done, did you try and flash an new bios and it went wrong or something?

Have you tried resetting the notebook, to do it just unplug the power adaptor, then remove the battery and hold the power button down for 20 seconds then put the battery back and and re-connect the power and see if the notebook boots up.

 

Did you check all the keys from your keyboard for free movement to ensure none of them are stuck (pressed) ? That'd be another reason why you cannot access the laptop's bios. Also disconnect ALL USB devices present, remove all memory cards and CD/DVD disks before you try to reboot. What model VAIO is it?

 

Try all keys to get into bios. Try F1, F3, Del, F12...
How to Access the BIOS for Sony Vaio Laptops | eHow.com


You have to be pretty quick, as soon as the laptop powers on, keep repeatedly keying F1 etc.

 

Thanks everyone. Got to Bios via F3. Managed to get XP install to start but when copying files 90+ gave the message "can't copy, retry or press esc to ignore". Had to ignore. After restart - nothing - just black screen.
I also have a vista disc so I thought to try a clean install of vista instead. Got message about disk's controllers not being enabled. No idea what it means or how to fix it. MS help had a solution which I tried but no difference. Also got another message "Windows unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation."
Am completely lost now and want to throw it out of the window but can't - its a friends machine. (PCG-FXA32 - very old)

 

Boot using the Gparted CD and delete the partitions on the disc; then retry installing Vista/XP.
Right now there is no unallocated space on the disc, thats why Vista is complaining about it not being able to find space.

 

Sorry - don't understand Gparted CD? When I first tried to install vista I made changes to partitions and had one line showing 10 gb of unallocated space and this was when the disk controller message appeared. Can you spell out for me what you want me to do please. I am worried about messing up more.
Just had another go at the xp disc. Same issues but after reboot got message "INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 12544 - set up cannot continue. Had this once before but just started again and message didn't come up.

 

GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD
GParted -- Welcome

Before deleting the partitions, you may also want to check the hard disk with gparted. Maybe the hard drive has some bad sectors...

 

Some success but still having a problem. Got another disc for xp pro and followed instructions to the letter from Windows XP Professional Install Guide Page 1
Up to stage 15 everything went as planned but when the machine reboots it starts all over again with the set up instead of moving on to the xp boot screen. Any ideas on this one? Was getting quite excited for a while - thought I'd cracked it!

 

I despair of this machine. Just tried again and I have managed to get the xp boot screen. Fingers crossed in the next hour or so I should be able to post a message that its done.

 

Thanks all - with your advice and patience I have got the Sony up and running again. Cheers!

 

Cool, did you have to use GParted?