[phosho510]

alright i setted the first boot to cd-rom, loads windows xp setup, create a big partion (60gb) format that partition, install setup files on partition, reboots computer, and operating system could not load? what did i do wrong?

my harddrive is Maxtor 60gb.

[The_Urge]

Make sure the drive is set to master or cable select and make sure that you are plugged into proper connector on the IDE cable.

[ApM]

Also check the jumpers, make sure it is set to master although I'm not sure that it matters if you only have one HDD, but like I said, I'm not too sure, always check though.

[phosho510]

yea the drive is set to master, i know the drive works because it had linux on it.

[digitaloracle]

Is the drive in the boot order? If it is, try making it the first and only boot device and see if that works.

[tribalsun]

Originally posted by phosho510
yea the drive is set to master, i know the drive works because it had linux on it.

More than likely you have a corrupt boot.ini since Linux was previously installed on that drive. Even after a format the boot sector can remain unchanged thus giving you a corrupt MBR when Windows tries to load the OS.

Use your XP cd to get into recovery console and use the /fixmbr command to repair your master boot record.

Have a look at these articles.

Fix Master Boot Record.

XP recovery console.