Hi everyone.

I've been interested in the Windows Server line of OSes, so since I apply for DreamSpark, I thought I'd go download it and try it.

I just so happened to have an old desktop that I was using awhile ago for Windows XP, so I imaged the drive in preparation for it to be overwritten with the new OS. (This system has an Asus A7V8X-X motherboard, an AMD Athlon XP 2800+ processor, and 1GB of RAM.)

I tried burning the first disk image on my newer desktop computer, running Windows XP, although the CD burner consistently failed at a particular track area from cd to cd, so it seemed like the burner was toast there. Fortunately, I had a laptop, so I transferred the images over to that, then burned the first disc there.

First time around went great, and the burning program reported no errors. I then took the CD over to the computer that I was intending to install Server onto, set the BIOS to boot from the CD drive, then I booted it up.

Like normal, after the POST, it printed "Boot from ATAPI CD-Rom: No Emulation", which I was used to seeing with bootable cds. I waited for the "Press any key to continue..." message that I had become so familiar with in windows discs, although I saw none.

The computer sat there for about 5 seconds with the cd spinning, then it spun down like it was done reading it. Nothing else happened. No response from the keyboard. I tried again, same result.

I then downloaded IMGBurn, and I put the burned cd into the laptop that burned it originally. I also downloaded a fresh image from the dreamspark site. I ran a verify session, and everything checked out.

I later tried getting various DOS startup discs, then I tried booting the winnt binary, which supposedly initiates the installation process. Either the shells reported that not enough memory was available (since they would be running in low memory mode), or FreeDOS in particular would report Illegal instructions right away.

Is the image corrupt at dreamspark, or am I doing something wrong?