Today I reformatted my hard drive after experiencing very SLOW conditions and when trying to reinstall windows XP I received the error message NTLDR missing press ctrl+alt+delete to restart. I then read that to access the windows cd i need to press a key immediately to prevent the NTLDR error message from appearing. However once I have accessed the cd and try to install windows it DISPLAYS the message "Setup could not read the CD you inserted, or the CD is not a valid Windows CD". I am completely stumped as to how to reinstall windows and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Mattis this an upgrade disk.>common problem>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314057 this system should load and then DISPLAY silly messages...that what the user pays for...you may have to re-build winxp...like format your hard drive win98/se boot disk load win98/se then place the winxp upgrade disk in..No, the cd I'm using is the full version of windows XP as far as I know. I own both a copy of windows XP Home and Professional and it can't read either of them.You Receive an "NTLDR Is Missing" Error Message When You Start Your Computer

Perhaps that is of use.Korastiz.....Ok lets run through this again......
By some method , you formatted your hard drive .....
so I assume you removed any partitions and then formatted. Now the hard drive is empty.....so we shut down......insert our Win 98 bootdisk in floppy drive A: and start up .......after the cd DRIVERS load and the A: prompt appears you typed D: ( or whatever your cd drive is ) then when it gave you the D: prompt you inserted the win xp or xp pro disk into the cd drive and typed .....either setup or install ( forget which one ) and windows will load ..........pour yourself a coffee and sit back and wait for it to load.........it will partition the drive as NTFS and load up .    Once its loaded reinstall your anti virus......go on line and go to Windows update and get them or d/l and install SP2 and your done .

let us know how you MAKE out.
dl65   Quote

No, the cd I'm using is the full version of windows XP as far as I know. I own both a copy of windows XP Home and Professional and it can't read either of them.