The previous two Dell computers (new hard drive) insisted on creating the
8MB partition even after deleting all partitions. The Toshiba laptop I
worked on today installed fine (boots up without any key presses) using the
Dell CD but then when I went to authenticate I noticed the license was for
XP Home and I had installed XP Pro. ... Duh :-(
Thinking back one of the machines that requires the key press has a disk
drive card with BIOS to handle disk drives greater than 120GB. The card
might be requiring the key press. The other machine used Win2000. I couldn't
get it to come up without requiring a key press even though the only thing
non-standard to Dell was the new hard drive.
Thanks for the suggestion. I guess I'm going to have to do some re-installs
and see what is changing between the machines.
-jeff
----Original Message Follows----
From: Paul Braun <cygnus@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
Is this a fresh, new hard drive, or are you reinstalling on a Dell?
Dell uses an 8mb partition for system recovery stuff, and when you
reinstall it doesn't recognize it the way it used to, so it gets
confused as to what is the primary partition.
There is a point in setup where it shows you what's on the drive. If
you see two partitions, simply delete both of 'em until you have one big
pile of bytes, then tell it to install Windows on that partition. When
it asks how to format it, pick NTFS.
Jeff Keller wrote:
> Hopefully someone can give me some advice. When I install XP from a CD to
a
> new hard drive is creates a partion of 8 MB which I would guess is used
for
> temporary files. After the install is complete, whenever I start the
> computer it asks me to hit F1 to continue.
>
> Is there a way to install from the CD to a new hard drive so that it will
> not create the second partition and more importantly to configure it so
that
> it won't require me to press F1 everytime I start the computer?
--
Paul Braun
Valparaiso, IN
"There's a fine line between stupid, and clever." - David St. Hubbins
"Enjoy every sandwich." - Warren Zevon
"The Fountain of Youth is a state of mind." - The Ides of March
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