Windows install hangs at black screen after intall...HELP pls

[rfowl2]

Hi all, i'm fairly new to the mac os, but i eventually will need it for my future occupation. The first problem i have is that i do like to game every now and again so i would like to put xp on my mac. I have two xp discs; one distributed with my pc (however i tested it with parallels and it works), the other distributed with a dell pc (tested with boot camp and does not work). Now the first disc does not have a sp2, so i made a slipstream (which i tested first on a pc to make sure it would boot, and it did). The second problem is that after i partition the drive with boot camp and reboot the computer to install windows...everyhing seems to go as planned and after the install is "finished" the system reboots to a black screen with the prompts:

"Press any key to boot from disc..."

The prompt stays up for a couple seconds then it attempts to start up without the disc and the following prompt (or something like it):

"Error starting disc. Press any key to reboot..."

Then it just hangs and when i try to press a key to reboot nothing happens so i have to do a hard reboot and manually chose to start in OS X.
Any idea what the problem is? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[Neil321]

maybe this will help

http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/

 

[rfowl2]

thanks for the swift reply, but yeah i've been there and saw that i have to format the drive but i never get that option. how exactly would i do that?

 

[Neil321]

Are you making sure you install it on the bootcamp partition
its hard to remember the errors as i installed xp ages ago

 

[rfowl2]

yes i'm sure it's the correct partition; however, i think i've found the solution:

"I had exactly the same problem and I eventually found what it was by taking the manual very literally.

Basically if you have an answer file (winnt.sif in the I386 directory) on the Windows XP CD you won't get the opportunity to format the partition which is very much required for Windows to install on the partition Boot Camp creates. I had an answer file in mine to automatically fill in details and basically make it zero effort on my part to install Windows.

In the end I rebuilt my XP image without an answer file, booted the sucker up after freshly repartitioning my drive, formatted with "NTFS (Quick)" and it worked like a charm."

this was taken from:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/848369.html

i'll try this and post my results, thanks for replying neil

 

[Neil321]

yes i'm sure it's the correct partition; however, i think i've found the solution:

"I had exactly the same problem and I eventually found what it was by taking the manual very literally.

Basically if you have an answer file (winnt.sif in the I386 directory) on the Windows XP CD you won't get the opportunity to format the partition which is very much required for Windows to install on the partition Boot Camp creates. I had an answer file in mine to automatically fill in details and basically make it zero effort on my part to install Windows.

In the end I rebuilt my XP image without an answer file, booted the sucker up after freshly repartitioning my drive, formatted with "NTFS (Quick)" and it worked like a charm."

this was taken from:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/848369.html

i'll try this and post my results, thanks for replying neil

ah ok could have told you about the formating bit but not the answer file,is this
because it was slipstreamed?

 

[rfowl2]

ok so yeah the disc i was using was slipstreamed from my original sp1 xp disc and had that 'answer' file on it. so i made a new slipstream disc, removed the 'answer' file and it worked beautifully. game time

 

[Neil321]

ok so yeah the disc i was using was slipstreamed from my original sp1 xp disc and had that 'answer' file on it. so i made a new slipstream disc, removed the 'answer' file and it worked beautifully. game time

Glad to hear it worked out ok,but that answer file was a tricky one as i had
know way of knowing this

 

[rfowl2]

yeah, not sure how anyone could have figured it out. i'm just glad someone did and that i found it...and now it's on here so anyone with a similar problem can now know the answer