NTLDR problem, want to install XP Pro from retail discs

Hi, in brief, have a A150 (160gb hard drive) which has had XP & OSX running perfectly since installation a few months back. Switch the machine on yesterday and have problems. Didn't do anyting to cause them the day previous :evil:

Tried the ACER recovery option, which ends up formatting C: it finishes OK, then restarts and I'm back to square one again. It just wants to repeat the cycle. I even tried booting from a "back up OS disc" (forget exact wording) and it won't recognise the XP disc

Using the iDeneb OSX installer I've managed to format the whole hard drive (no biggie as no longer need OSX on there).

Connect up external DVD with the retail XP Pro disc in, boot from it and get

CDBOOT: Couldn't find NTLDR

After a few hours searching on google and creating a ISO of NTLDR and (I think) intallling it, I still have the same problem, I've updated the BIOS to 3309 correctly so am now stuck totally. Just want to install XP again.

Can anyone share any tips/advice. Just need the machine to recognise and boot from the CD and everything should be fine.

Thanks.

 

I would use a bootable USB flash drive with Acronis Disk Director and reformat the internal hard drive. Then try booting from the Windows install CD again.

If you know the brand of the internal drive, then there may be some hard drive manufactures software you could download and burn to cd. That would test out the cd drive as booting off another cd disk and allow you to reformat the hard drive.

 

Thanks for the tips, will give it/them a try this evening and let you know how I get on.

 

Turns out it was a problem with the DVD drive, switched to another one and worked first time. A few hours of my life wasted but hey-ho.

Thanks for the reply though.