I am installing xp on a laptop with out drives following directons after installation of 7.1 and copying i386 folder when trying to boot to the drive i get a I/O message and dos wont load I am wondering if you can help me figure out what i am doing wrong

my experience: drive is FOOBAR or not in working condition, kaput or whatever you want to call it but like usual this is my experience and Im probably wrong. Possibly if you downgraded no SATA or RAID drivers or a drive error.

Note: don't copy i386 folder! you need a boot manager. Forget what I just said: here is the prob now i looked at it properly: DOS7.1 is set to default boot on your boot area. You need to get your xp install to different drive and make it bootable. Then go to BIOS and boot. When installing xp (if no option comes up during install right after) go to msconfig or somethin like like it and set xp to default boot. should fix it. And don't yell if it doesn't work: im only 13

"when trying to boot to the drive i get a I/O message and dos wont load "
Perhaps if you post what the exact message is someone may have clue as to what the problem is