XP boot Problems... HELP!!!

Hi There,

I recently had PSU problems and recently had a tech look at it and found the PSU faulty (now replaced) I took the computer home plugged it in and everything seemed to work fine for the first start up but then last night my boot process said unable to find boot.ini so booting from c:/windows (boot sequence a:, cd-rom then C: )

It then gets stuck in a loop where i can't get it to boot from any of the methods offered... safe mode, last good config etc.

when i boot from floppy (ms-dos) it won't recognize c: because it's NTFS format.

I tried reinstall/repair windows with my oringinal XP disk but... i can't find my licence number (recently moved and it's in one of 50 boxes in the garage).

before I rip cartons to shreds... is there any other way?

thanks,

Julie

 

hey julieleanne,

Allow me a moment to post you a fix.

 

1. Make sure the computer is set to BOOT from the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive.

2. Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive, and then restart your computer.

3. When you receive the "Press any key to boot from CD" message, press a key to start your computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM.

4. When you receive the "Welcome to Setup" message, press R to start the Recovery Console.

5. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you have to use from the Recovery Console.

6. When you are prompted, type the administrator password, and then press ENTER.
Note: If you do not have one, just press ENTER.

7. At the command prompt, type bootcfg /list, and then press ENTER. The entries in your current Boot.ini file appear on the screen.

8. At the command prompt, type bootcfg /rebuild, and then press ENTER.
This command scans the hard disks of the computer for Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000, or Microsoft Windows NT installations, and then displays the results. Follow the instructions that appear on the screen to add the Windows installations to the Boot.ini file. For example, follow these steps to add a Windows XP installation to the Boot.ini file:

a. When you receive a message that is similar to the following message, press Y:
Total Identified Windows Installs: 1

[1] C:\Windows
Add installation to boot list? (Yes/No/All)

b. You receive a message that is similar to the following message:

Enter Load Identifier
This is the name of the operating system. When you receive this message, type the name of your operating system, and then press ENTER. This is either Microsoft Windows XP Professional or Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition.

c. You receive a message that is similar to the following:

Enter OS Load options
When you receive this message, type /fastdetect, and then press ENTER.

Note: The instructions that appear on your screen may be different, depending on the configuration of your computer.

9. Type exit, and then press ENTER to quit Recovery Console.


Let me know if you have ANY problems with these instructions. PM me if you need me ASAP.

 

make sure u don't have a floppy in and maby change your boot siquence to c d a

 

I believe I got it covered bro

 

Good morning...

well i tried the bootcfg and it all went well.

it reported that i had 2 windows installs (i have original one plus the attempt i made to do a re-install)

so far so good... i then got a message that said:-

windows couldn't start
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll
corrupted or missing

there are 3 O/S at the start now
1. the original windows
2. the attempted re-install
3. the rebuild which gives me the above message.

any ideas?

ta,

Julie

 

Can you boot into windows using either of the 3 listed? If you can we can remove the multiple entries. Let me know!

 

unfortunately no!

what's next???

 

See the link I send you in PM, let me know if that helps.

 

hi all,

I ended up finnaly getting my product key and did a repair... the result was great all went well for a short time (all settings were saved), i then started getting memory dumps... 8^ (

this i couldn't get past... i tried an old HHD and loaded windows agian. all went well once more but then all of a sudden i started getting my original problem of windows spontaneously rebooting. i back peddled and discovered it was the audio software for the onboard audio chip (ASUS KV8-E M/B) realtek software was the problem all along!

removed the drivers and software... loaded creative audiolgy card and every thing went well.

result is a new C:drive and a few hours of loading the software back on one at a time and creating restore points along the way... so far so good.

thanks to all and if i have any more problems i'll write again (sorry my skills are not good enough to help out at this stage but I hope to in the future!)

Ciao,

Julie

 

Glad you got it working Julie!

Happy Computing