OS doesn't boot... HELP!!!

Can flashing an optical drive screw your motherboard?

Hi guys, I have a rather unusual situation. Let me start of by saying I'm usually somewhat proficient at diagnosing and repairing hardware errors, and some software too; this problem falls in a grey area.

My pc was working just fine, and I decided to upgrade my optical drive to bluray so as to back off a lot of data.

I bought the LG WH14NS40 from Amazon.
When installed it was detected by the OS and showed up in My Computer... so far so good... or great even.

I had previously chatted with LG about the drive before I bought it and they recommended that the drive be flashed with the lasted firmware, found here:
http://www.lg.com/us/support-product/lg-WH14NS40
when I got it.

When I flashed the firmware and the software said that it was successful and restart the PC, the PC could not reboot. It would stick at the windows screen with the bar stuck at the bottom. I couldn't believe a simple firmware flash messed with my PC or OS I thought at the time. I rebooted a couple more times and was unsuccessful, then I decided to repair the OS, this is where all hell broke loose, I tried 3 different XP install discs and none of them would boot properly, they all reached the same point saying:
"Setup is Starting Windows"
and nothing would happen afterwards, I left one setup to run/load for a couple hours, to see if there would be an incremental progression... there wasn't.

I also tried to launch a Macrium Reflect Rescue Disk to restore a copy of the partition I had saved earlier, and lastly to launch an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS disc to run a live OS, none of them would boot. The rescue disk did something similar to the windows disc, it would launch, install drivers and then when it was time to load window pe,... nothing. The Ubuntu disc, which is pretty much automatic, didn't show anything on the screen at all.

Can anyone please help me?:cry

PC: Dell Dimension 4600
P4 - 3.8 GHz
2 GB RAM
Windows XP Pro SP3

 

Blueray video is not compatible with XP (if i,m not mistaking)
You lost the file /WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/WINDOWS/Startupconfigration/

Your best bet is to upgrade to Win 7 or 8

I have 2 towers with XP sp3 that will not boot because I installed
new hardware
same problem as you

I hope the geeks here can address this problem

 

Same here. I installed a DVD unit on XP sp3 system, flashed the firmware update, and the whole system just died the same death described by BluJay. Wouldn't boot anything...no OS, no rescue disk, no disk image restore disk, no XP install disk, nothing. I thought about upgrading but I had no reason to believe that it would boot a Windows 7 install disk either. From the account given by BluJay, it doesn't sound like his system is going to boot ANY install disk, regardless of OS. I wish I could be more helpful but when it happened to me I couldn't get any usable recommendations from either the manufacturer or Microsoft. The manufacturer eventually came to the conclusion that my HDD happened to crap out at just the moment that I flashed the firmware, and that's why the system wouldn't boot. When the manufacturers of computer subsystems start pointing the finger at each other, it's time to get a new system, which is what I did.

Here's hoping that someone smarter than me can do CPR on your system.

 

Have you tried using your old optical drive yet?

 

My first impression was the flash firmware messed with the OS files or contained a virus, but those would be much simpler to fix and wouldn't prevent booting of rescue discs or linux discs.

For what you are suggesting, a simple OS repair, using the install disc would have fixed it, which is what I tried to do first.

Damn it! This more or less confirms that the flash screwed the system, I didn't think that was possible.

I have been using my old drive, an IDE drive. But you bring up a valid point, I have another working drive that the new one replaced, I will try that. Not expecting much though.

Any more suggestions guys?

 

Also, just for info, there are a lot of player that will play bluray videos on XP, your PC just has to have the hardware to run it.

Examples are Nero Kwik Media, VLC player and Power DVD.

For Playback of bluray media, you will need;
at least a GeForce GT 240 graphics card or GeForce 305M
Pentium 4 3.2 GHz or Dual Core 1.8 GHz
for 3D withou hardware acceleration (good graphics card), you'll need at least Core 2 Duo 2.66

 

Hi, I tried a drive that wasn't in the PC during the flash and it resulted in the same stall after the "Setup is Starting Windows" message; I even left it to run for about an hour, and no progress.

I then used the same install cd on my laptop to check it, and it booted fine and passed that setup is starting windows stage in about 2 seconds. And I went until it asks to install windows and then quit... so the cd nor the drive seems to be the problem.

I'm thinking something about the flash process may have flashed one of the chips on the motherboard... can this happen? Not the bios mind you, the bios loads and runs fine.

Anyone have any suggestions for me? Other than dump it... which right now is looking like my only option.

 

edited---posted to wrong thread sorry

 

Hi, I just thought I'd give you guys an update, in case anyone else experiences this;

I had another motherboard just like the one that was in the PC, so I swapped them, using all the same parts as before including the hard drive, as is.
While unseating the processor, I noticed one of the heatsink clips was broken (old age), and hence the processor still being properly pasted to it, wasn't seated properly, most likely causing the issues I experienced.

Being broken, when I opened the case to swap the drives before, I could have shaken it or nudged it a bit which would cause it to unseat.

I still went ahead with the swap and everything booted up fine. No changes to anything software related. There may still be a chance something in the motherboard was flashed, but I didn't reseat the processor to test that.

So anyone experiencing a similar situation of nothing booting, check your processor before you do anything else. Reseat it, add a fresh layer of thermal paste and properly reattach the heatsink and fan.

 

Thanks for the update. I love surprise endings!

 

I,m going to check my 2 towers and see if that the problem
I,ll check back with the results

 

That fixed one of my towers

Thanks

 

You're welcome.

I'm glad my blunder helped someone else.:-D