Computer will only boot

[Colin Brett]

like chester said, its more than likly its a bios problem. check your bios boot order

 

select hard drive as first then cd as second boot device

 

you can access it by pressing F2 or if you see an option stating press [whatever] for setup or bios when you first start the computer

 

Thanks Andy, done all that but to no avail!

[chesters1]

have you tried repairing the windows installation using the cd? its in there somewhere but you may have to keep pressing F8 to get it on booting (been a long time since i played with it)

[Colin Brett]

have you tried repairing the windows installation using the cd? its in there somewhere but you may have to keep pressing F8 to get it on booting (been a long time since i played with it)

 

Been there and done that.

 

I think I'm resigned to leaving the cd in the drive as once it boots it's fine.

 

It will get sorted at the next clean install! I hope??

[chesters1]

strange ! what does it say if you take the cd out before booting ?

even stranger i dont have a boot.ini file either but it boots fine (i can see hidden files) so it must be earlier in the sequence in the master boot record? Newt!

i think the windows disk will overwrite it with a spare but wait for Newt to ok it.

Edited October 10, 2008 by chesters1

[chavender]

another thing too try ,is the Master boot record repair ,if the MBR is curupted (when it is windows won't boot !) , it can be fixed fairly painlessly by booting with a xp disk ,put in the Windows CD. press R to get the command prompt, select your HDD then type fixmbr ! ( Ok,its a bit more complicated than that)

 

firstly get into windows ,goto control panel > user accounts if administrator is showing go into it and set a easy to remember password ,write it down you'll need it later . (i use the word "password" saves writing it down.)

 

if administrator isn't showing go into any account thats a administator credited account ,in the left hand menu sellect manage another account .this should revel all accounts .then go into the Administrator account and set a easy to remember password ,write it down you'll need it later . (i use the word "password" saves writing it down.)

 

re-boot the Pc and as the cd is going through the motions ,there will be the option to goto the repair consol By pressing "R" ,Select your windows XP installation from the list, and enter the administrator password.(told you you'd need it (because if one isn't set ,it won't work ,as xp has a bug (shock / horror) this should bring you to the repair command section (its a command line consol)

 

Enter the command: " FIXMBR " (without the quotes) and confirm the next question with a Y . this will build a new MBR hopefully linking to the ntdlr file allowing xp to boot properly (with out the cd in) there will be a covering notice about destroying the data on the drive to be fixed ,if it worries you ,don't continue ,but its just microsoft just covering themselfs )

 

or you could use this bit of software to do the same thing : http://www.ambience.sk/experiments/MbrFix.exe and run it from within windows (still set the admin password though ,if the fix works you can delete the password if you like)

[corydoras]

like chester said, its more than likly its a bios problem. check your bios boot order

 

select hard drive as first then cd as second boot device

 

you can access it by pressing F2 or if you see an option stating press [whatever] for setup or bios when you first start the computer

I think so too. If that does not work press 'Del' when booting to get into the BIOS menu. Look for an option like "Advanced Bios Features", then Boot Order.

 

Make changes as necessary and the press F10 to save and re-boot.

[arkay]

Colin if you're using an old internal hard drive you have to set the jump switch to slave otherwise your pc will be trying to boot from 2 drives. Take it out and you'll see the switch crossing the pins.

 

A couple of pics, it will probably be set to master, change to slave using the key shown on the label. If it's not this type of drive, sorry for wasting your time.

 

 

Edited October 16, 2008 by arkay

[Colin Brett]

Colin if you're using an old internal hard drive you have to set the jump switch to slave otherwise your pc will be trying to boot from 2 drives. Take it out and you'll see the switch crossing the pins.

 

A couple of pics, it will probably be set to master, change to slave using the key shown on the label. If it's not this type of drive, sorry for wasting your time.

Thanks Bob, but I've checked and double checked everything I might have messed with but I never needed to change the jumpers.

I've changed the bios start up sequence and it makes a difference but not the one I'm looking for as the computer won't start at all if I put the HD as number 1 in the start sequence.

 

I'll wait until I need to do a clean install or change to Vista [AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!]

 

Thanks everyone for all your efforts.

 

Colin

[Andy_1984]

Thanks Bob, but I've checked and double checked everything I might have messed with but I never needed to change the jumpers.

I've changed the bios start up sequence and it makes a difference but not the one I'm looking for as the computer won't start at all if I put the HD as number 1 in the start sequence.

 

I'll wait until I need to do a clean install or change to Vista [AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!]

 

Thanks everyone for all your efforts.

 

Colin

 

 

just a stab in the dark, disable the cd drive by unpluging its power and see what happens.

 

have you tried a bios reset by removing the battery for 30 minutes.

 

i say 30 minutes because all systems are different and the time it takes to disipate can be different ive had computers where ive removed it for seconds, minutes and still wouldnt reset untill i left it 30. theres a totaly understandable explanation to this but it escapes me.

 

i had a look on other places and some believe it to be hal.dll to be corrupt, have you tried the windows repair using that command.

 

also might want to try some sort of master boot records reset utility, there are some bootable cd's that can do this including hirrens boot cd and ultimate boot cd

Edited October 17, 2008 by Andy_1984

[Andy_1984]

just had a very similar problem to yours last night, i have 2 hard drives 1 with vista the other with xp the one with xp was managing booting for the vista drive for some odd reason but when i formated the xp one for an extra 200gb storage my vista side went tits up because of this.

 

to fix the problem i tried the vista repair option on the installation cd and it found the problem but was "Still" trying to install boot management on to the storage hard drive and vista still wouldnt boot without the cd saying ntldr is missing ?

 

so i thought why not remove the storage drive and give it no option but to install on to the vista drive. successfuly repaired and put boot management on to the right drive this time so i rebooted after the repair and windows loaded then shut down and plugged in the storage drive and all was back to the way it should have been.

 

give it a try it might work