I was wondering if anyone have had this problem while upgrading to XP. The version that I have is valid. However, the laptop that I have seems to be the problem. I have a compaq 1400T (presario model) and it came standard with windows me from the factory. But because of all the crap that it had, I wanted to do a clean install--BUT the problem that I have is that the floppy drive won't read my boot disk (worked for my desktop) and allow me to start and get a dos prompt to perform fdisk and format the drives. I am not sure if it is because my floppy is an external USB type floppy?
I was wondering if anyone has had this problem or can suggest a solution. I want to do a clean installation with this boot disk. Is there a way to make a bootdisk from windows me or XP?

Is there by chance anyway to force the system to read the bootdisk?
thanks

 

Your USB floppy drive is the problem. USB only works under Windows OS. So if Windows is not loaded, there is no way for the USB Floppy drive to work. (There are a limited number of USB devises that have their own BIOS built in so that in can work outside of windows, but that is rare.)

What version of Windows XP do you have? You should be able to boot right off of the CDROM without having to use the Floppy disk. Just go into your computer's BIOS and set it to boot from CDROM.

 

by the way, there is no need to perform fdisk and partions manually when loading Win XP. During the setup screens, WinXP will do it for you.