Backgrade to WinXP over Win7

Yes IMHO Way To Old for Win 7.

Look at the Motherboard manual for instruction on bring up the one time Boot menu. If you don't have the printed manual you can more then likely download a PDF of it from the MB manufacturers website.

edwar said:

Yes IMHO Way To Old for Win 7.

Look at the Motherboard manual for instruction on bring up the one time Boot menu. If you don't have the printed manual you can more then likely download a PDF of it from the MB manufacturers website.

I did not find the boot menu in user manual but finally ESC was OK.
There were 3 ways to boot - I chosen CD, and the result: HDD boot again (even if disabled at BIOS)
Why?

edwar said:

Not sure the Ultimate CD has a partitioning program on it. Try this one.
EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition - CNET Download.com

Then there is Partition Magic and there may be one listed in the tutorials on this forum.

The Ultimate CD does have partition programs but the tools I found in those are creating, deleting, splitting etc. partitions. It means they are simple programs and not contain formatting (or deleting data on system partition)?

If you are tapping the correct key given on first boot screen to boot the CD and it instead boots HD, do you get the prompt to "Press any key to boot disk?"

If not you'll need to burn another CD as it is not booting. WIll another bootable disk boot in the drive?

gregrocker said:

If you are tapping the correct key given on first boot screen to boot the CD and it instead boots HD, do you get the prompt to "Press any key to boot disk?"

If not you'll need to burn another CD as it is not booting. WIll another bootable disk boot in the drive?

No "press any key.." for me. Maybe ESC is not good for boot menu(?)

PowerISO shows it is bootable image.
Could it be a problem that the win xp .iso file name or the label not the one it should be?

Where did you get XP ISO? Try burning confirmed ISO with ImgBurn at 4x speed. If it is slipstreamed then it may be a corrupt ISO. Have you tried XP SP3 for your licensed version, using correct retail or OEM download?

Boot into BIOS setup tapping the key given for that on first boot screen. Set CD drive first to boot in BIOS boot order, then HDD. Save choices and Exit. How to Boot your Computer from a Bootable CD or DVD

If you don't get prompt to Press Any Key then it's not a good CD.

gregrocker said:

Where did you get XP ISO? Try burning confirmed ISO with ImgBurn at 4x speed. If it is slipstreamed then it may be a corrupt ISO. Have you tried XP SP3 for your licensed version, using correct retail or OEM download?

Boot into BIOS setup tapping the key given for that on first boot screen. Set CD drive first to boot in BIOS boot order, then HDD. Save choices and Exit. How to Boot your Computer from a Bootable CD or DVD

If you don't get prompt to Press Any Key then it's not a good CD.

It is XP Prof SP3. Got it from a friend. Not original, if you mean that.
Boot order was modified it's OK.

This "press any key" is a bit of mystery for me. I tell you what I did:
During boot (=verifying DMA or something... boot from CD...) I hit Esc and Easy Boot - 'Volkov Commander like' screen - came up with 3 choices. I set CD-ROM to boot and after that HDD booting as usual. If there is still a function key which makes the prompt "press..." then I don't know which one is that. Not found in user manual. I tried already Esc, F1, F2, F10, F11 (I know F8, it is for optional startup).

If ESC gave you a boot menu then why keep looking? If it's not working confirm that with the CD drive set first to boot.

Try booting into BIOS setup to set CD drive to boot first, as I just suggested.

If that fails to get the prompt to Press any key, then the problem is likely the CD. Try booting it in another PC.

Hello again,

I made a backup from F and merge 2 partitions for easier install of XP. My problem:
I boot from install CD (I got another one, last one was maybe wrong) and boot is ok, check hardware, copying files etc. OK. When it restarts in 15 seconds, after boot the process starts again from the very first steps. What should I do? I tried during reboot to change first boot item to HDD but error (OK, I was a bit naive..) Any suggestions?
Thanks

Does the XP installer see the HD at the screen where you select your partitions? If so delete the target partition, re-create and full format it to see if that helps. If not you'll need to slipstream the SATA driver to make it see the HD.