Cannot reformat for the life of me.

[leetskeetin]

Alright I'm halfway through graduating with my CS degree so I'm not that incompetent. Although this one has me stumped.

Since I know a bit, I can tell when I have a virus, if it tends to be annoying I'll just reformat, 20 minute thing no big deal. So I go to reformat, I get "Press any key to boot from CD...." I do, and nothing happens. Weird, so I try again, and it seems I can get into my bios by hitting delete when I boot, so it's not the keyboard. So I go into boot priority and make every boot device CD DRIVE assuming it'll boot from it anyway, but no, it goes right to my hard drive.

I have no idea how to reformat, any suggestions?

Thanks

 

[Celegorm]

if the windows CD detects an OS on your hard drive it won't boot automatically without you pressing any key.

Are you using a wireless or wired keyboard? Some older wireless keyboards do not work for the windows install, so this could be your problem.

 

[leetskeetin]

if the windows CD detects an OS on your hard drive it won't boot automatically without you pressing any key.

Are you using a wireless or wired keyboard? Some older wireless keyboards do not work for the windows install, so this could be your problem.

It's wired, and I've used it to reformat before, on this system, with the exact same variables.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Try this, while booting press F8, that should bring up a boot menu allowing you to select which device you want to boot to.

If after pressing "Any key to boot to CD. . ." and it doesn't boot to the OS CD in your CDROM, you may have a bad CD.

 

[leetskeetin]

Try this, while booting press F8, that should bring up a boot menu allowing you to select which device you want to boot to.

If after pressing "Any key to boot to CD. . ." and it doesn't boot to the OS CD in your CDROM, you may have a bad CD.

Doesn't work, and the CD will load from inside Windows, so I don't think it's bad, and physically there are no scratches or anything.

 

[Celegorm]

It could be that just that one block on teh CD is bad. I'd still try a different disk if you have access to one.

 

[leetskeetin]

It could be that just that one block on teh CD is bad. I'd still try a different disk if you have access to one.

Invalid boot.ini file.

Is what it says now, it's the factory xp disc, can I download xp home and burn it and install from there with my key?

I don't have any spare blank cd's, so I'd have to learn how to boot from flash drive.