I have a compaq E700 laptop that I just bought. The Floppy drive, cd, worked fine. It had win 2000 on it, and it worked fine. But w2000 does not have a SYSTEM RESTORE prog. Win XP does and I need that prog. So I attempted to load xp over W2000 as a dual operating system. MY laptop has a 13.5 gig hd and about 190,000 mb of memory. The first time I did it win xp was a bad load. so I tried again and made a mistake of formatting the hd with ntsf. The first time I did not.

Needeless to say , now I have absolutely NOTHING.

Each time I try to load xp, now on the 10 th try, I get a very quick flashing note and then the puter begins to reinstall. This is the vicious circle that I am now facing.

The best I can read the flashed note is as follows.
"a write operation in an attempt..... to complete.....after .... the API"
the ..... = missing words. It flashes to fast and connot be read.

The second problem.

After initializing the f 10 button to get to the bios, I changed the boot sequence from Hard drive to both the cd and the floppy.

I have a beautiful floppy which has on it means to fdisk, format and load to the c drive the initial startup progs. Now I cannot get to the floppy. I get an error code "Remove all media and click any key to continue.

I have original win 95, win98, win98s and xp cd's. I do not have win 2000.

I just tried to format, using the xp cd to non ntsf, hoping I might be able to install win 95 or 98. That also failed.

Now I am staring at a black useless laptop. I NEED HELP>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Read this article for instructions on dual booting xp & 98. You cannot install 2 operating systems on the same partition because they will mess up each other (especially during installation) [this is probably where you messed up before] so your hard drive will need to be broken up into 2 (or more) partitions. As the newer OS, XP will have to be installed last. Keep in mind that if you want to use XPs system restore program the XP partition must be formated as HTFS as it will not create restore points on a FAT32 partition. As the article explains 98 can't use an ntfs file system. I hope this helps. Why not just go with xp?

Welcome to D-A-L.

This HP page illustrates that XP Home or Pro will run on that machine: Compaq Armada E700 Notebook PC series- Download drivers and software - HP Business Support Center

However, if you only have the "stock" 128 MB of RAM, be prepared for a slow running O/S. That machine was designed for Win 98/Win NT, with Win 2000 as an upgrade.

Make sure the optical drive (DVD) is the first boot device in the machines bios. Set the hard disk as the second boot device. Don't worry about the floppy, set it to third, after the hard disk. Ensure you are SAVING THE CHANGES upon exiting the bios setup.

Boot with your XP CD. (I'm assumming it's a retail CD, either Full or Upgrade. Upgrade is fine as long as you have a 98SE CD, as you stated.) Enter the Recovery Console.

When you get the command prompt, type mkdiskraw 0. This command will totally nuke everything on that machines hard disk. EVERYTHING. There will be no MBR, partition table, or file system on that disk after you run this command. (Since you've basically cacked the hard disk already, this will ensure it's fully blank.)

When it finishes, reboot the machine and attempt to install XP as a clean/fresh install. XP should have all the drivers you require. If there are any which you may possibly require, get them from HP. (Use the above link and choose the drivers for XP Home or Pro (under Select operating system), whichever you have.

Post back with your results and any further questions.

I want to thank you for your help. of all the replies , yours was the best.

I got it fixed and this is how. I refomatted the hd with fat 32, not ntsb.

I put in a factory original win 98se disk. the puter booted to something, I do not know what or where.

What came up was the computer was looking for a xp file. Ovecourse this file was not on the f98se factory cd. So I put the xp cd [non factory} and let it go. Xp loaded and all works fine.

The only thing I can determine is that the non factory xp cd has something missing .

I thank you again for your help.

Your [non factory] XP CD is probably a burnt copy then, and it's missing the boot sector files, or it was intended to work with a boot floppy.

In any case, glad you got it going.

There is a tool in XP for converting a FAT32 drive to NTFS. (You cannot convert it back to FAT32, just so you're aware.) The NTFS file system is more secure. The tool should be in; Start, Accessories, System Tools.