Windows 10: Install dvd won't boot on older server

Hello all!

I'm trying to install windows 10 pro 64 on a server. It's running 2x xeon 2.4ghz 533mhz processors with 4gb ram, ati rageXL 8mb, 80gb ide hdd, ide 16x dvd burner, floppy drive, AMIBIOS, etc. This is a new build, and system has no OS. BIOS is up-to-date (and not UEFI!).

The BIOS doesn't support booting from USB. Windows 10, 7, vista install dvds will not boot. Windows XP and Linux dvds do boot, but don't support the hardware, so are uninstallable. Not sure why, but system doesn't recognize etfs. Oddly the system does support OS/2 if that could help in some way.

So my question is how can I install win10? I was thinking that a windowsPE ram drive could let me start the installation, but it would have to boot with boot.wim, and I don't have a "Technician Computer" handy to just throw a PE disk together. If I could partition out 4gb of the hdd and copy the dvd contents to it, that could conceivably work as well.

I'm at a loss as to how to proceed. If someone could send me a PE iso that will do what I need that would be very helpful. And before anyone asks, no these are not Itanium xeons.

Thanks in advance!

:)

 

Can not install Win10 preview on GPT partition

Hi,

For best results, use RUFUS to create a bootable Flash Drive...

Select GPT and format as FAT32...
https://rufus.akeo.ie/

The Win 7 USB\DVD Tool won't create a USB that will boot in UEFI BIOS, but will work with the older Legacy Bios...

If you create Win 10 media from the Win 10 Create Media website, it should work with UEFI BIOS...

You may or may not be able to boot with a DVD... This is something that is not standardized well... Some machines will, and some won't...

Some machines have the CD\DVD drive listed twice in Boot Options...

Once as a SATA CD\DVD, and again as a UEFI CD\DVD... or something very close to that...

BTW... You might try selecting Custom Install... Advanced... to choose where you want it installed...

 

PC no longer boots into windows 10

The PC won't boot to the DVD drive with the Windows Installation Media on it

 

Thinking about it, I guess a floppy with CD or USB support could do the trick as well.

 

Also my install disks are good. Some are OEM and all have been tested on other systems.

 

Motherboard is Supermicro Super X5DEI-GG

 

Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk

 

Thanks NavyLCDR, even though that iso uses PE it is etfs, but a custom PE disk that uses wim could be made. Regardless, floppy was the way to go. I made a Gujin boot disk that was able to pull up the dvd drive and launch setup. Turns out my system is 32bit even though it has 64 bit video and PCI. So I popped in a 32bit disk and its been hung on the windows logo for about 30min now... Any advice?

 

A couple things you can try -

Like you suggested earlier - make a small partition on the hard drive, like 5 GB, copy the Windows installation files to it and run them from there.

Disconnect all hardware not actually required to install Windows and then after you get the basic install done add the hardware items back one at a time, installing the driver for each piece of hardware one item at a time.

Booting from floppy disk - wow, that brings back memories. Which one was it - was it DOS 6.22 or Windows 3.1 that had 13 installation floppies?

During installation have no connection to the internet available.

 

Navy, no it was a linux based disk with the Gujin boot manager. I do recall the days of swapping out disk after disk, or trying to download over 2400baud (or worse yet 300baud.) I do not miss it!

The only thing in there to pull is a wifi card, but I will try that. I thought we were past the point of IRQ conflicts and the like. I didn't/don't have any network connections. What would you recommend to do the partitioning? fdisk? What type of filesystem should I make? Fat16?

Thanks for helping BTW

 

Update: I pulled the card, and it didn't make a difference. So partition table here I come... Still open to software recommendations.

 

I would think you can use any partitioning program you can get to boot to partition the hard drive. I would recommend a 5GB FAT32 partition at the very end of the drive. Have you Googled Xeon processor compatibility? It looks like it is very difficult to get Windows 10 to run on it.

 

So you're saying there's a chance! *Wink

No it didn't occur to me to check that, as it's x86 and exceeds the minimum requirements. I'll google it after dinner. SO, I used the XP recovery console to partition and condition because the system has no problem booting that disk.

As a refrence, here's what I did:

diskpart /add \Device\HardDisk0 71312

diskpart /add \Device\HardDisk0 4997

format \Device\HardDisk0\Partition2 /q /fs:fat32

fixboot \Device\HardDisk0\Partition2
Now I'm stuck on how to get the files onto the partition. The best option would be to extract from the iso directly to the partition, which I haven't tried yet. What I have tried is connecting a 2nd dvd drive and tried booting and copying using various methods, none successful.If there is a better way or a utility or something please tell me. For now my plan is to look into possible incompatibility issues (which I don't like to do, red herrings and the like,) and find a command line iso extraction utility that can run off a disk. Ideally off the same disk as the iso.

 

Install Windows XP, upgrade to Windows 7, upgrade to Windows 10 maybe?

 

Wow that was a fast response. I would have to make an XP Pro 32bit install disk. All I have are 64bit. Does XP support dual processors and hyperthreading? Does MS still require a key for XP installations? I would also need a Windows 7 key to do it this way. If I got up to Win7, would the Win10 upgrade be free? (I do have a Win10 key)