Fresh xp install, trouble booting from cd

I am working on a friends system, it is kinda old with a p3 500. The MB is a aopen mx6e Plus. I formated the drive which had 98 on it prior to formatting. When i put in the xp cd and adjust the bios setting to boot from the cdrom and i restart when it goes to boot it says cdboot: cant boot cdrom error code 5. I also tried to install 98 out of frustration and was going to jsut upgrade to xp. So i put in the 98 boot disk, get an a prompt, put in the 98 disk and tried to run the setup from the cd drive. It tells me i need windows to run this program. I am like wtf, if i had windows i wouldnt need to run this program.

sigh......
please help,
Thanks in advance,
Charlie E.

 

Have you tried to boot from your 98 bootdisk, then put in the XP cd, and run that setup?

 

yes, it says this cant not be run in dos mode. Is there a way i can get a command prompt without my bootdisk?

 

No. You have to load some type of OS to get a prompt. Dos, 98, etc.

 

I tried the ultimate boot disk that is available for download on this site and it wouldnt even boot from it. I also went to aopens site and did a search on the error code and i found nothing.

STUCK!

 

Strange you can't boot from the XP cd. does the cd drive spin up during post?

 

yes, it spins up atempts to boot then it says error. I believe it is something with the MB. It would boot from the cd at first but after xp loaded all the drivers and tried to start the install it wouldnt restart. I flashed the bios and now all it does is error wont even boot from cd. I'm wondering if it installed all the drivers is it not booting because those drivers are already there. In that case i would have to do another format, I guess. I dont know

 

Sounds like you might be right. If a reformat doesn't do it, you might want to reflash the bios with the backup (old) bios file.

There are far smarter people here then me. Hopefully someone will look in here, and have an answer for you.

 

You have gone back into the bios & changed the boot order to floppy first haven't you???

 

yes i have done that. I also tried to install xp on another drive and put it in the other computer and it will not boot. I tried to go into safe mode and it fails, it starts loading the drivers and never gets to booting. I think its just a pos motherboard. It has a p3 500 and it reads it as a p3 333 and it never reads all the ram, sometimes it cant recognize the c drive. When i load the w98 boot disk i can get it to see the fixed disk, there for i cant even install 98. I flashed with the most current bios and that was from 99. Not to happy with aopen, glad i go with asus seems there is much better support.

 

boot disk

hi go here to get a boot disk from dos 5.0 all the way to xp pro
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

hope it helps

 

The error message you got suggests a problem with the mobo. Make sure the CD's IDE cable and power cable are snug. If you can, put the CD on it's own IDE channel. Flashing the mobo BIOS or swapping the IDE cable might help, too.

It may also be a bad CD drive. If the machine had 98 on it, then the CD drive is probably almost 5 years old (especially if it wasn't 98se). You could try a newer CD drive.

wk990's bootdisk link should provide a decent workaround if you just want it up and running, however.