blue death

[gonemad]

my son has an asus p4b266 when he starts it error of the get go (boot disk failure insert disk and press enter) so i do it runs through copying files and then press f8 to agree when i do, where it (should say partions) it says can not access disk, when i press enter to set up xp- here's the blue error alot of mumbo jumbo and then this(stopxoooooo8e,0xf99c3cad,0x94e37e4,oxoooooooo)
setupdd.sys address f9997000 base at f9997000 date stamp 41107c8f any suggestion would be great thanks guy's

 

[Kage]

This is a laptop I'm guessing?

Why did it start doing that in the first place? Did it just happen? If it did, it could easily be a hard drive failure.
If it happened because you did something, the disc you are using, where its copying files could be corrupt also, but it could also be the RAM, which accesses the data during installation.

I'm afraid it doesn't seem like it'd be an easy fix.

 

[A True Folder]

appears to be a desktop board Kage

@OP, no floppy disk in the floppy drive yeah? that will cause that error message.

Could also be a faulty cable, are the optical drive and the HDD on the same IDE cable?

 

[gonemad]

any idea's where to start to try to fix the problem thanks for your reply so fast

 

[Kage]

A True Folders got a point.

Is there a floppy disk in the floppy drive?

Open up the computer if you can, and as he said, check the ribbon cables for any damage, that may cause the floppy drive (if there is one), to activate, or if theres any damage to the hard drive cable.

 

[Celegorm]

If you have a SATA hard drive, make sure BIOS doesn't have it set up for RAID. If it's set for RAID XP's setup will not see it without a floppy drive with a driver disk.

 

[Kage]

...

Oh my god. How did I do that. I refreshed, thinking it was still my thread. Sorry

 

[Celegorm]

I do have my SATA drives running in RAID 1, so they are both mirroring each other

Right, but if he doesn't do the F6 to install RAID drivers while the XP cd is loading, he won't be able to see his hard drives.

 

[Kage]

Yeah, haha, sorry about that Celegorm. I don't know how I did that.

I'm wanting to know how this came up though. Wheather for instance, he had Windows running fine, and it suddenly started doing that, or wheather he wants to install Windows for the first time, after for instance formatting.

 

[gonemad]

it seeing my xp disc copy's files but when i (d) for delete or (enter) for set up i get that blue death error will not (c) for create partion going to take apart now thanks for replying