Boot Up Problem

MrVestek

Ok guys having a problem here with a system. It's a mate's pc but i just cant seem to figure out the problem. For some reason (that we obviously can't figure out, otherwise we wouldnt ask here) is that the OS on the hard drive won't boot. The post doesn't seem to recognise that there's an OS on the hard drive. We tried reinstalling XP but after the first reboot it wont boot into whatever's on the hard disk itself. We installed XP onto the drive using another pc and that went fine but when we put it back into this other system, it again wouldnt boot the OS. We have absolutely no idea what's going on and were wondering if you guys could help out. Thanks in advance.

Specs of system:

Ram: 640 Megs
1.2 Athlon XP
60 Gig Maxtor HDD

Mac daddy

what message does it give you at post-?
Have you tried using diff cabling- ?
Can you boot of Xp cd and perform a repair?
Does Fdisk see the partition in the HDD?

MrVestek

Nothing, doesn't give any message at post. fdisk picks it up... tried performing a repair, but after it reboots from the dos like thingy to go into the windows install... nothing happens. It's like as if it can't recognise the MBR for some reason. Went into the recovery console and rebuilt the mbr, but again nothing happened. I thought of using a different cable but i didn't think it'd make much of a difference. I'll mention it to him now and see what happens.

Capt'n Midnight

you could also make a boot disk. cf. windows forum

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/newreply.php?s=&action=newreply&threadid=170107

Fast tips
Repairing the Windows NT/2k/XP boot sector on a Fat partition

Windows NT installs a boot sector that launches NTLDR and displays the Windows NT boot menu. If you lose this boot sector, BootPart can restore it.

Boot under MS-Dos (this can be a copy of MS-Dos 6.22 on your hard disk, on a MS-Dos bootable floppy, or the "MS-Dos 7.0" included in Windows 95 (you can obtain it by pressing Shift+F5 when Win95 loads). Then, enter the command :

BOOTPART WINNT BOOT:C:

If you want to remove the WinNT boot sector, you can replace it with the command "BOOTPART DOS622 BOOT:C:" or "BOOTPART WIN95 BOOT:C:"

MrVestek

Thanks but that's not it. As i said the hard drive in another system will boot fine.

Mutant_Fruit

dodgy IDE cable possibly, change the cable and retest.

OfflerCrocGod

Does your BIOS recognise the drive as the Primary Master? - do not install XP on a diff machine and then expect it to boot on the machine MS don't like that and windows will not boot. Make sure if it's cable select that the HDD is on the right IDE plug (the last of the two I believe for Master).

Capt'n Midnight

Originally posted by Achilles
Thanks but that's not it. As i said the hard drive in another system will boot fine.

Windows likes partitions to start in even numbers or something - I've had bootpart fix some cloned drives that would start up on from a boot disk (format disk in nt/2k/xp - copy ntldr ntdetect.com boot.ini to it)

sometimes the BIOS settings can change the IDE mode which can affect the HDD geometery.

If it don't boot off the boot disk then not good

Could also try sys'ing the drive with dos/win9x boot disk to verify drive is OK - then use bootpart to re-enable the NT boot sector.

If drive starts in other system the partition is being detected as active

[asking stupid questions]
I take it by not boot you mean either a black screen or one with a cursor flashing in the top left hand corner. If you get a blue screen with Boot device inaccessable then that is a different story

MrVestek

The bios just doesn't detect that the hdd has a boot sector. Skips past that, the cd roms, and then asks for a disk to be inserted into the floppy drive. As i said this even happens if we clean install windows on the same system. When the reboot comes for the install to happen properly, it just boots into the cd again. If i take out the cd 'system error, please insert disk.' It's a real pain.

OfflerCrocGod

Originally posted by Achilles
The bios just doesn't detect that the hdd has a boot sector.

So it does detect the HDD as the Primary Master then? Well that's a pickle you could try flashing the BIOS with the latest version and seeing if that changes anything.

Capt'n Midnight

Did it boot off the boot floppy ?
Did it boot off the HDD after you SYS'd the drive ?

Unless the HDD is primary master it may not startup (some BIOS's will try to boot first available drive - eg: secondary master)

Stupid stuff - check the jumpers - if on CS (Cable select) or MA (Master) try the other setting
Boot Priority is FDD/CD/IDE ?

MrVestek

No changed the boot priority to hdd/cd/floppy. Erm, jumpers are correct. Didn't try sysing the drive as it's windows xp. And yes it does show up as primary drive.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
Will FIX NT/2K/XP boot sector after SYS'ing the drive.

Again did the boot disk work - if so then try BOOTPART

Is the file system NTFS - If so and if the only way to get it to boot is a boot floppy - simply use NERO or whatever to make a bootable CD using that floppy... (slightly faster)

aaf

Get a new HDD cable or make sure that the existing connections are sound. Had the same problem when I was fixing a PC a few weeks ago and I discovered that it was a dodgy cable and the RAM wasn't fully seated.