How do! having a few issues...

Ive been Re-formatting peoples PC's without major problems (Simple Format Then load all the OEM Drivers)

I have been Given this Toshiba Satellite L300 to Reformat due to a Virus which has rendered the main PC Useless IMO (Runs Painfully slow, 15 Mins to boot up, Windows loads with Tons of "Crap", such as Pop-ups, Ad-ware, Mal-ware)

As per usual, Entered the Bios Setup, First boot from the CD Drive.

Restarted, Loaded up the Disc, "Press Any button".

Now, it goes through the loading phase (at the bottom of the blue screen)

After 5 minutes it reachs "Loading Windows", and this point i get an Error pop up!

"Problem has been detected, Blah Blah Blah, Run CHKDSK F/ etc....."

Ive never had this problem before, ive tried it 4 times, same results.

Im Stumpt!

The OS System is Vista Basic, im trying to Load XP Home onto the laptop.

Any thoughts?

So run chdisk, boot windows disk, enter repair mode ( R button I think ) and run chdisk /f. Then try to isntall again

This is my problem, it comes up with this error before that screen comes up (Press R to Enter Repair Menu, Enter to install Windows fresh etc)

Then try using vista's install disc, go to repair menu and enter command prompt, then enter there chdsk /f, tried this many times, worked, good luck

EDIT: or you can enter vista's safe mode, it should load and from there launch chkdsk

Also were my problem persists! they threw out the old Laptop box, not realising there was important software discs in the box!

I Managed to find the software disc for it online, thats about it!

This is were im stuck :/

So, you still cant get any windows to install/boot ? Try Hirens BootCD, it has a bunch of tools you could use to check/repair/format the HDD, or test other hardware parts ( RAM modules especially )

The laptop itself, Boots and works fine! (although, takes 15 mins to boot, and Windows is full of Ad-ware, mal-ware which slows it down, and is painfully slow)

What im trying to do, is use my Windows XP Install disc to format and install XP on the laptop

So after you insert the windows disc you cant actually install it cause it says that the HDD has some problems. I still recommend formatting the HDD using hirens boot cd, or take the notebook apart, connect the HDD to a desktop PC and format it that way.

Quick Question.

If i got to the System Properties Tab, and Right click the HDD and Click Format, will this do the job? i just want the drive Empty so i can install XP!

It's likely that the windows disc you are using has no support for the notebook, ie. no drivers for motherboard and VGA.

What I would do is try to distinguish what acctually is the problem first, hardware malfunction or as above lak of drivers on the Windows install CD.

The quickest way to test hardware is to run Ubuntu netbook remix, if it boots and all is well then you know the problem.

The only way I am aware of to get the drivers that you downloaded for the notebook onto the Windows disk is by the method of slipstreaming, basically nLite asks you for the Windows disk then the OEM notebook drivers can be added to the install. It's a piece of cake to use.

If all of the above fails, use a HDD live CD like the one mentioned above, or I recommend Gparted Live CD.

Good Luck.

Typically, you don't need drivers to be slipstreamed for them to work during installation. It is usually typical to install them after Windows installation. While nLite is a good method, I never can get it to work with slipstreamed drivers. Maybe I fail with nLite. Removing components with it, however, can make you installation rather light, and fast, rather than big, fat, ugly, and bloated.
With the installation. I'm not sure if the installation via boot is OS independent or not. To be sure, why don't you use a partition tool such as good old gParted, or Magic w/e, and get the HD to a raw status, or format it to NTFS, before booting the installation disk. Why? I'm not 100% sure, but unless you partitions had faulty sectors, I don't know why it'd be asking you to run chkdisk.

Quote from djgizmo68 :

Quick Question.

If i got to the System Properties Tab, and Right click the HDD and Click Format, will this do the job? i just want the drive Empty so i can install XP!

It might format another partition that is not the primary partition, but you will not be able to format the whole hard drive. Such, you are still running on the OS. And you cannot delete or modify files when they are in use; well Vista won't let you do that. And it is common knowledge... You cannot format a primary boot partition while running the OS. You need to either do it while booting off a secondary partition (maybe you got Windows XP installed on HD1 (usually D:\), or you could have run a Live CD, such as the Ubuntu Live CD, or you can even run the Linux Recovery Disk, which is what I use as a partition tool.

Best bet... don't use Window's Partitioning Tool. Try something like Killdisk, and do a normal quick wipe. Then partition with something like gParted if you run multiple partitions, (formatting while in OS is slow as hell especially with old PCs, and big a$$ partitions!). If not, then create and format the single big one while installing XP; which is required, as always =D.

Fix the problem with brute force; Do it the Killdisk way.

Use gParted to wipe it and then use nLite (with the SATA etc drivers integrated) to slap a new OS on there.

nLiting my project eee got the XP CD down to 113 MB...

Quote from Jakg :

Use gParted to wipe it and then use nLite (with the SATA etc drivers integrated) to slap a new OS on there.

nLiting my project eee got the XP CD down to 113 MB...

Just a question about the nLite. How did you get your installation CD down to 113mb. I've seen various that I thought would pose errors. The furthest I got was 245mb with SP2. Would you mind posting an configuration file for it?

Included my drivers in that, too. Seems the actual ISO file size was 186MB after all but it does have SP3 at least.