Stuck boot

Anyone out there who has come accross this sort of thing before?;

I was using my XP based PC last night and after Windows Explorer had crashed three or four times I decided to reboot the PC. This is where the problems start.

The boot sequence starts OK with a normal single POST beep but then hangs with a message which says: "Incomplete operation - insert recovery media" (It's actually a longer message than that but that is the gist of it). Anyway the only "recovery media" I have is the original XP CD. However if I reboot with that I just get the same message.

I tried going into BIOS and setting the boot order to CD first and this then leads to a message on boot which says "Boot from CD:" which it repeats but then just sits and does absolutely nothing.

I have also tried booting from a Linux CD but that results in the same "Boot from CD:" message and lock-up.

Any ideas what to try next? :confused

 

Yargwel, I'd burn one more disk, see if that changes anything (UBCD or TestDisk might be good choices) - could be a waste of time, though, if the Linux didn't boot.

 

And, another shot in the dark: are you seeing everything ok in Setup? You might try resetting your BIOS, even changing the battery - maybe the optical isn't communicating. I know this wouldn't have caused your Explorer crashes, but first things first.

 

Cheers Caliban. I've tried four different bootable CDs of various types including UBCD. All read OK on another PC and the crashed PC has two optical drives and I get the same symptoms in either.

I'll try resetting the BIOS tonight but as for seeing everything OK in Setup - I presume you mean in the BIOS as it stands (as it's the only thing I can see at the moment) and the answer to that is yes - everything appears to be OK in the BIOS.

 

Finally worked out what the problem had to be - and after managing to get it to boot with the HDDs disconnected all became clear and the rest was relatively painless. The problem turned out to be a fairly well corrupted MBR - so I wiped that and restored the back up and all is sweetness and light again. :cool

 

Just to close this story off - the disk failed completely the day after - sounding like it was running on broken glass - at least I'd manage to back up half my files before it failed. Just need to buy a new one now,,,,,,,

 

Well, at least now you know where you stand. Good luck - keep us posted. :major