WinXP Install CD Won't Boot! What gives?

October 4, 2007 11:55 AM

Why will neither my computer nor VMware boot the Windows XP SP2 installation CD I got from my university?

So I run Linux, but I have a Windows Virtual Machine set up with VMware for times when I just can't avoid using Windows (and, um, Civ 2). My VM just got accidentally erased. So I got a new Windows XP install CD from my university, and got all set to reinstall WinXP....but it doesn't boot. Through either VMware or through my hardware itself. All of the files are on the CD, as far as I can tell.

VMware will boot a Knoppix CD, so it's not the drive's fault. It's also not this CD in particular, since the guy at the help desk booted it when I got it. I even tried copying the whole CD to an ISO image (with dd, so it preserved the boot sector too) but that didn't work either.

Why is this happening? What can I do to install Windows XP onto this VM?

posted by goingonit to technology (9 comments total)

Is it an upgrade disc?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:03 PM on October 4, 2007

No, it's supposed to be a bootable install disk. This is confirmed by the fact that the help desk guy actually booted from it.
posted by goingonit at 12:11 PM on October 4, 2007

You can boot from an upgrade disc, it just won't install anything if you don't already have a Windows directory on your system.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:23 PM on October 4, 2007

It is, in fact, a real live installation CD.

Incidentally, I've worked around the problem. For posterity, I:

• downloaded the Win98 boot floppy from this site;


• booted from the floppy, with the CD drive mounted;


• ran fdisk and format from that floppy (if there's no valid HD partition, XP setup will complain that it can't create a swapfile);


• ran r:/i386/winnt.exe (r: is the CD drive), while booted into the floppy, which started XP setup.

I'm still a bit mystified by the non-booting of the CD...but I guess it's just one of life's little mysteries.
posted by goingonit at 1:31 PM on October 4, 2007

Consider freeciv as an alternative to playing Civ2 on Windows.
posted by polyhedron at 1:54 PM on October 4, 2007

You may have had to go into your boot menu and told your computer to boot from the disc. Often the boot order will be set in the BIOS such that it tries the hdd or floppy before the cd-rom, meaning if your hdd was bootable in any fashion it wouldn't have even tried to boot from the cd. Usually its the f8 key that takes you into that menu during POST.
posted by zennoshinjou at 4:12 PM on October 4, 2007

Not sure if this applies to VMWare on Linux, but in the Windows version I have sometimes had to set the CDRom 'Legacy Emulation' option on to boot from certain CDs.
posted by cwhitfcd at 4:43 PM on October 4, 2007

Some versions of VMware only try to boot a virtual machine from CD one time before automatically changing the BIOS boot device order to skip the CD. I know VI3/ESX and Fusion have done this to me (and it's a pain to get the keyboard captured fast enough to be able to hit F2 to change the boot order!) and I have vague memories of Server doing so as well.

Other than that, VMWare is perfectly capable of booting any of several varieties of XP install media. One of the things I spent a chunk of this week working on was making some custom XP install CD images and I spent a lot of time testing them in VMWare, including dealing with some non-bootable duds.

"What can I do to install Windows XP onto this VM?"

Make sure the specific VM you're using has the BIOS boot order set correctly, or cut a fresh VM.
posted by majick at 5:13 PM on October 4, 2007

I believe certain very old CD ROM drives simply aren't bootable at all, that probably isn't your problem though..

I've used computers that would only boot a CD if the boot order was floppy - CD - HD (may have been dependent on the type of boot image, see below). I bet other picky BIOSs might prefer other orderings..

Is it only XP SP2 that fails to boot? What about Knoppix, or the Ultimate Boot CD, or whatever else you might have in a drawer somewhere? There are many different ways to create bootable CDs, and it wouldn't surprise me if certain hardware had trouble with certain kinds of boot CD.
posted by Chuckles at 9:30 PM on October 4, 2007