Posted March 9, 201410 yr I am trying to do a clean install of XP Home Edition to my desktop which has had XP fitted from new and is now running very slowly ( 2years or so since a clean install by an engineer). The whole system has been backed up to an external hard drive. Avast has been switched off. I am following 'Perform a new installation of Windows XP' as found on windows.xpl.tripod.com. The installation disc is the original MS hologram one from the PC desktop maker, loaded into ROM drive (CD/DVD:SM-BENQ) and I see 'What do you want to do?'. I also have a BENQ RW drive. Next I boot and find that I need to press F11 for boot device menu. 1st Floppy Drive, HDD etc are available. Highlight CD/DVD:SM-BENQ DVD-ROM 16X and press Enter. I see 'press any key to boot from CD'. Pressing space bar, Delete etc like lightning the moment it appears ( even pressing quickly and often before the words appear) has not worked after several attempts. The system simply loads Windows normally. I have tried F2 during initial boot, gone to BOOT in the Setup Utility and selected the SM-BENQ to be the 1st Boot device, done F10 to Save and Exit. Pressed Enter to accept OK. Pressed F11, highlighted SM-BENQ once more and pressed Enter. Again 'press any key......' appears. Tried g key, and different ones on other attempts. I do not see 'Set up Windows XP', Windows simply loads normally. Is there a different 'any' key I can press to stop the normal loading? Is there an alternative method to achieve the objective? Continue reading...
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