ok, I'm an idiot(dos)

I need to know more dos. I know, this is really embarrassing, so please be gentle. I have a new hard drive (120 gig) and my neighbor installed the XP pro in it. However, all I can get is the dos prompt or a blank screen-blank, nothing not a blue screen. I know this sounds idiotic, but I can't remember the dos commands for getting the installation to the next step. Basically its in, but not all the way up and running. Anyone feel patient and benevelent? I'm only asking now because it's about 12:30 am my time and he's crashed. In the morning I shall go bang on his door, I was just hoping someone might be up now that could give me a hand.

 

Don't know anything about dos but did a google search and came up with these.Hope they help ya. or

 

Don't feel bad and if there is anyone who should be embarrassed, I think it is your neighbor who installed XP and left you with a blank / prompt screen!

Speaking of this 'blank' screen, what exactly do you see when you turn on the PC? I am sure the white words on the black screen appears right after you turn the system on Video Card's BIOS shows up giving you some info on the video card itself, immediately after that motherboard BIOS runs POST-Power On Self Test) and displays overall system specs (RAM, CPU, BIOS version, etc), then what happens?

Note: Although possible, installing XP from DOS is pretty much silly. XP CD is bootable, assuming your motherboard support that (if it doesnt there is a good chance your hw might be a bit outdate for XP?).
Anhow you set your boot order section in the BIOS settings so the system looks for boot files on the CD-ROM Drive, then you pretty much follow the screen instructions but I don't want to get into details on that since it might be too much for now.

 

Ah, thank you! No, it's not too much, that's just about where it is now. I get the dos video card info then the splash screen, and the BIOS info the windows logo... and nothing. It doesn't continue on with the start screen, just blank like the monitor was turned off (I checked, it's on). I can get dir in dos and the -ok, back to square one. I get the message about it not shutting down properly previously and then blank. Attempts to get something got the dir but no further. The motherboard is new enough, it XP in it before and ran great, I just swapped a new bigger HD (120gig) for the old one-40gig.

 

If your computer boots into dos then you should see a propmpt ( C:> ) in the top left hand corner of your screen. Insert your cd and at the prompt type in the drive letter of your cd-rom an a colon ( [driveletterhere]: ) then hit enter. Then type setup at the prompt ( [yourcd-rom driveletterhere]:>setup ) and then hit enter. This should get your O/S setup routine going. After that just follow the onscreen instructions.

 

why not just put your old hdd back in as master and your new one as slave and boot up?

 

I am still not clear on where it exactly hangs...you mentioned after Video and Mobo BIOS info screens it just turns blank/black? Is that correct? Or does it give any error messages or do you see anything else on the screen (like command prompt)?

Don't let the black command prompt screen fool you, unless your friend installed the latest stand-alone version of DOS (MS-DOS 6.22), you do not have DOS, XP does not run on a DOS based operating system like Windows 9x did.
I got the vibe that your friend did install Windows XP but for some reason the boot files or some of the device drivers got damaged/corrupted.
As soon as you see the BIOS screen keep tapping on F8 key until you see the boot selection menu where the top option would be SAFE MODE. If you can get that far and see the menu select the 'Safe Mode' and try booting that way.
Let me know.

 

Ok, Ragnarok I get a blank screen. No prompt, no response from the key board. All I can do is unplug it. Now since I do get the beginning info screens, I could do F8 and load my XPhome disk from safe mode. I did get that once. Turcoloco, yes its black blank. No prompts And I think I was calling the BIOS prompt the DOS prompt. So I think I'm more clear on that. I'm going to try loading XPHome from my disk and see if that works. I'm beginning to wonder if the problem is some bad transistors or something on the motherboard. Also, if I load the XPHome edition from my disk, how will the XPPro that's already in there affect it?