I was given an old (~4 years old) desktop a few days ago. Has 250GB IDE Segate Barracuda, 4GB DDR2 DIMM, not sure about processor clock speedbut although it's probably an AMD, crappy generic brand DVD/CD drive, and an integrated graphics chip (meh). I was planning on making this a small Minecraft survival server for some friends and I, but it had a messed up version of Vista on it. When booted for the first time it asked for an activation key (which I don't have for the full version of Vista) and told me that it was an "invalid build of windows" (or something along those lines) so I assumed that the previous owner had a pirated copy. Anyways, finding that I really couldn't use Vista, I decided I would install XP (which I do have an activation key for). Everything's going alright: Windows Setup appears, I choose to delete the old partition with Vista on it (no I did not delete the system partition), make a new partition, format the new partition to NTFS, press the button to copy WinXP files to new NTFS partition. When that gets done it restarted and I took the install disc out planning to put it back in when I was prompted to. I change the boot order from CD/DVD to HDD and what would come up but a disc read error and a message telling me to press Ctrl+Alt+Del. I'm kinda pissed from working 3+ hours trying to figure this out. Anybody able to help me? Any suggestions welcomed and thanks in advance.
Hmm... Just a shot in the dark but you might want to go into the BIOS and check if the SATA/IDE controller is set to AHCI or IDE. Set it to IDE and try.
You don't have to take out the disc and there is no need to chane the boot order! Just don't press any key when it restarts and let the setup do the job until your intervention is required.