I have a notebook computer which the hard drive is dodgy in.I have restored to the HD and after a while it Windows XP corrupted again. I don't want to spend any money on it but I would like to keep using the computer so I looked at swapping the HD with another HD (from a USB case) but one was SATA and the other PATA.So the only option left (short of spending money) is installing and booting from the USB drive? Is this possible?
View 2 RepliesDoes anyone have a guide to install win xp or 2k (really any version of windows) on a flashdrive to boot from. mainly because i find it does a better job at defraging when im not boothing from the drive. NOT a way to install from a flash drive, but actualy have a working version of windows like a live linux install.I have 8gb flash drive, and windows versions from 98se to 7 rtm.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI have a five year old dell dimensions 8200. Three years ago, I added a 250 gig. D-drive. My computer has been so slow that I wanted to reinstall windows. So, erased and formatted my D-drive and put windows on it. I then added a program called "Wipe Drive" in order to erase my C-drive. (I was thinking to use my d-drive mainly and c-drive for backup). I closed my computer, then when I went to reboot, i first got the message "ntldr is missing press control alt delete." So, I did this. I soon did not get the ntlrd message and got a message saying failure to boot and press contol, alt, delete to restart. I tried to instal windows again and it did not boot. I did the f2 thing and made sure my cd-rom was first. I did the f12 thing and tried to open cd. Nothing has worked to help boot or get to the blue screen that lets me choose drive.I think I erased important start up info on my c-drive.
View 8 Replies View RelatedWinXP Pro SP2..Multiple drives USB, SATA, EIDE..Had WinXP on C:. Drive started getting a little flaky, created an XP parallel install on newly formatted NTFS drive F: Dual boot works fine, can choose either install to boot, (of course the F: install is newer/cleaner/faster)C: continues to go south, taking the bootloader with it.Is there some way to make the drive F: installation bootable, so that I can jettison the wonky C: drive? It's not a question of BIOS boot order, or whatever, if I disable C: and set the F: disk as the boot device, I get an error message about inserting bootable media.I'm fooling around with Acronis Disk Director and OS selector, but that doesn't seem to get me completely there.
View 5 Replies View RelatedCan anybody point me to the instructions about how to install XP Pro to a single Win98 hard drive - to make it dual boot, like Win 2k? I've been looking all around the internet and the only thing I've found is an XP dual boot on a 2nd hard drive.
View 14 Replies View RelatedI have a compaq presario x1000 that is virus infected. it loads windows very slow and the dvd cum cd rom does not work. how can i reformat my laptop? is it possible to boot it using a usb pen drive since my dvd cum cd rom does not work?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI just bought a new Western Digital Harddrive and a new CD drive(Aone or someting i belive). Anyways i installed both of them and i can see them in BIOS. The boot order is the following: Cd -- Floppy -- Harddrive. When i pop in the xp cd it wont boot. I know the cd works cause i tried in my labtop. What can be the problem? And how can i possibly solve it?
I have also tried Msdos disk. I put the disk in and went to my cd drive; then went to folder I386 and then typed "winnt.exe" which went into Windows Xp Setup and gave the following error "An internal Setup error has occurred. Could not find a place for a swap file. Setup cannot continue. Press ENTER to exit."
I installed gentoo on my primary hard drive and have boot, swap and root partitions on it and they take up the whole drive. I want to install windows on the secondary hard disk but it is saying it needs a compatible partition on the primary drive but it is already full!
View 8 Replies View Relatedi am putting a new hard drive in a laptop ,but the installation only gets so far,it will format etc etc load files then I get an error message "non emulation press any key to boot from cd" this just keeps on rolling and wont go any further,
View 14 Replies View RelatedI recently installed a new hard drive into a friends computer and installed XP Home.
I ran all the updates and service packs.
I left later that day and let him install all his applications.
I got a call tonight from him saying he really screwed up and doesn't know what to do.
I had to follow his thinking over the phone so I hope I get this all correct.
He had trouble loading the drivers for his HP printer. He would get an error saying that a C: empHP_WebRelease folder was missing. He did manage to figure out that for some reason when I installed XP it called the Boot drive "I" instead of "C"
I have an old HD From a system that I got rid of. I want to put it into a friends system to see if I can retrieve the files off of it and put it onto my external HD. The hard drive was the boot disk and the computer I am installing it on has it's own boot disk. If I boot up with two boot disks will there be a problem? Is there anything I need to take into account before doing this? I am planning on installing the old HD onto an ATA cable that I unplugged from the DVD drive. The HD that is in this system is not on an ATA cable, I'm not sure what it is connected to, just a small plug with a blue cable going to the mother board.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI just upgraded my system a couple days ago and have been having several issues. First, Vista wouldn't recognize my onboard sound and LAN from a fresh install No available drivers, go figure. So, I had to install two copies of Win XP SP2, and then upgrade one of them to Vista. A pain, but the only way I could get everything to work properly.
I got everything where I wanted it, life is good. Then I'm booting into Win XP and I have two identically named Win XP OS's in the bootup screen. So as not to confuse my wife, I went into the Startup and Recovery options menu (Again this is in XP) and deleted, what I thought, was the XP I used as an upgrade to Vista. Turns out I got the wrong one. Now I can't boot to XP, but Vista is working fine. Basically, when I choose "Earlier Versions of Windows" I get HD activity for a moment, but then everything seems to halt. No responce from the keyboard, so I have to do a Hard Re-Boot.
I'm thinking about starting over. I have an O/S (winxp pro) that is hopelessly messed up. Is it possible to install a new HD, install xp pro on it and then install the present c drive HD as d drive and save all the data on it to the new HD? I don't want to reformat the present drive and loose everything there
View 11 Replies View RelatedI am try to two partition drive C and drive D in my computer but only one c or d instoling. i have 4000mb hardrive,please tell me how can i instol partition in my window xp professional.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI have done some searching and it seems that other people who have had this problem, have been installing ubuntu. I havn't managed to come to a solution. I installed XP(1) onto drive 1 , then reorganised all of my partitions to be in the correct order with the correct labels (I have been having a nightmare with volumue labels being incorrect!). Anyways got all the partitions exactly how I want them using partition manager (i.e XP(1) on C: with the intention to install XP(2) on D. Rebooted machine, pressed a key to boot from CD, it says 'setup is inspecting your current configuration' and then the screen stays black (I have to reset the machine). I turned off the computer and dissconnected drive 2 (int.) and drive 3 (ext.). Problem still exists.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI installed XP(1) onto drive 1 , then reorganised all of my partitions to be in the correct order with the correct labels (I have been having a nightmare with volumue labels being incorrect!). Anyway got all the partitions exactly how I want them using partition manager (i.e XP(1) on C: with the intention to install XP(2) on D. Rebooted machine, pressed a key to boot from CD, it says 'setup is inspecting your current configuration' and then the screen stays black (I have to reset the machine). I turned off the computer and dissconnected drive 2 (int.) and drive 3 (ext.). Problem still exists. How do I boot to the blue setup screen for my second copy of XP?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI have a dual boot system (2 hard drives) booting Suse and XP and boot up through Suse's built in boot manager which gives me the option of booting to Windows or Linux. But since I barely ever use Linux I want to delete it off the 2nd drive so I can use it for a storage drive, so I'm wondering how to replace the Windows Master Boot Record so I can just boot into my XP drive. I'm scared that once I delete/reformat the contents of the 2nd hard drive (I'll probably use Partition Magic to do this through my XP drive) that I won't be able to boot XP up anymore. So before I do anything I want to just be able to boot into XP and bypass the linux drive before I delete it to make sure everything is ok.
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a HP ze5568cl laptop (Windows XP SP2). For a few years we've had trouble with the power connector. We've just wiggled the power cable to keep it connected and lived with the problem. It also gets very hot and the fan runs constantly. Yesterday when I powered it on there was no power, absolutely nothing. My husband has some electronic knowledge so we took the laptop apart and he soldered the loose part of the power connector. While he was doing that I cleaned the fan (couldn't believe how much dust was in there.When we plugged in the power cable the orange light came on so we were excited. When we powered it on all the keyboard lights lit up so we thought we had fixed the problem but.that's all it did. It went no further except that the fan kicked on.There is a clicking noise coming from the cd drive about every second with the green light flashing. I suppose it is checking to see if there is a bootable cd in the cd drive. I have attempted to change the boot order by holding F1, then F2 but it still continues to try to read the cd drive. I can't get to the screen that will allow me to change the boot order.
I also put the OS disk in the cd drive, hoping that it would start with the disk but it just clicks. Hubby removed the cover of the cd drive and I could see that the cd is spinning.There were no problems with this laptop prior to the power problem. It was really working very well especially considering the age of it.
The information in my sig is not for the computer with the problem. It's actually for an old computer which my son now has at college.
I bought a computer for my wife and kids. Well months go by and my wife tries to install something and notices that the MAIN drive is H: not C:
I figured that it was weird but no big deal. Well I purchased a printer for her and while trying to install the software it was giving me a "Windows - No Disk in Drive" error.
I did some research and spoke to HP tech support and they suggested that I search the web for a way to change the drive letters from H: (current hard drive) to C: (supposed to be default drive)
I had a drive that was beginnning to squeal and i figured I could disable my drives one at a time to see which one was squealing. Of course, disabling the drives through the control panel doesn't actually keep them from spinning, so the whole thing was an exercise in boneheaded stupidity. Anyway, as soon as I disabled the c: drive the screen went blank (of course), and now when i try to reboot it complains about a non-system drive and asks me to insert a system disk. did I mention that this is a home-built system and it doesn't have a floppy, so i can't boot off the floppy? I tried booting off the XP install CD, but it won't except that either (this seems odd to me).
View 1 Replies View RelatedI installed a Serial ATA hard drive. Booted from floppy,partitioned and formatted 120mb HD,with 2 partitions.
Connected my old IDE drive and booted from Norton Ghostdisc, cloned my old drive to the new one. Removed all drives and USB card readers except the new SATA drive. Windows will not fully boot, it halts at the blue Windows intro screen. Restarted Windows, and scandisk ran, but indicated drive letter "H" not "C", so I guess the windows installation is still looking in the original place for it's files, ie. the "C" drive, that's why it won't boot. You cannot change the "System" drive letter from "Computer Management" within XP, and I cannot get into Windows anyway. Is there a "work around" for this, other than a clean install? Even then, is it still going to be drive "H"? And that means another Windows activation. How many goes do you get for activation? I tried a windows repair installation, and reactivation (wasted). Windows then worked, sort of. Lots of things were missing and programs unuseable,as they were looking for their files on "C": so I went back to square 1, put my old drive back in for the moment
I have a dual boot system with both having windows xp.When I load into the 1st XP installation, the following is the list and assignment of the drives:
C : Local Disk (contains the 1st XP installation)
D : CD Drive
E : Local Disk (contains data and also few installed program folders)
F : Local Disk (contains the 2nd XP installation)
Initially when I noticed this drive arrangement after setting up the dual boot, I just left it as is, not knowing what to do.But nowadays I am having a lot of problems as the installed programs are not accessible because their target location keeps changing, everytime I keep switching between the two operating systems.How can I solve this problem?Can I do the follwing : Load into the 1st XP installation, and then change the drive letters (of the last three drives) such that they are matching the drive assignment as seen when loading into the 2nd XP installation.Here in a way I have kept the same drive name for both installations.But Will this work?I also have some of the program folders for the 1st xp installation stored in E drive, and after changing it to D drive, will all the links be properly converted upon restart?
A customer gave me an xp laptop that was horribly ridden with viruses spyware etc. Apparently, she had tried to fix it herself with the restore disk. I see two instances of xp at the boot prompt and one of the installs ask for activation. She must have chose the "install windows on the existing installation" option.
I cleaned out the original install, updated it, and it runs fine now.I figured I would just let the second install sit where it is and edit the boot.ini to allow just the original instance of the os at the boot prompt. However, rather than just presenting one option, it presents "Windows XP" and "windows default" options. Certainly I didn't put windows default in the ini file. I suspect the windows written mbr is picking up on the second install.
I have successfully cloned my primary c partition of a dual boot system with XP Pro on the 1st primary partition c: and XP Pro on the 2nd primary partition as d: I can boot into my XP on the c: drive with no problem, but when I attempt to boot into my XP on the D drive it hangs on the blue screen right before booting into the user profiles. And believe it or not it continuously loops making the windows startup sound and the shutdown sound. It does the same in safe mode. I will try to explain the process on what I did so it can help you experts figure out this dilemma that I'm having. My old drive an IDE 100GB IBM primary drive was partitioned into 3 parts:
c: 30GB FAT32 primary
d: 30GB FAT32 "
e: 30gb FAT32 "
All ran great in XP's on c: ,D: and :e except that i was running out of room in all the partitions and the drive is getting very old , I think (5yrs). I used XXClone Pro v.0.58.0 to clone my old c: and d: partitions to a WD IDE 160GB. I tried many other cloning proggys like Acronis True Image, Drive Clone, Paragon Drive Copy, Drive Image 2002, HDClone 3.1 Pro but they all either changed my new drive NTFS file system to FAT32 or made exact same size copies. I formatted and partitioned my new drive as follows:..............
I had voltage fluctuations last night due a snowstorm and the voltage dropped crashing my PC.It now won't boot and gives the error that a file is corrupted.Windows/system32/config..The PC runs an OEM XP home edition on a SATA drive, the PC also has an IDE drive (D) but the OSes are on the C drive.Inside the XP installation I have Linux Mint installed.When I boot I get the 2 options I always used to , XP (default) and Linux Mint.XP won't boot when selected and gives the error above.The Linux Mint, also on C and in fact installed as a program within XP, will boot, hence I believe the SATA drive to be undamaged.I can see the C drive and all the XP files from the Linux installation.I've tried using the original full CD and the recovery console but when the recovery console opens all it can see is the IDE drive which it labels D (and of course doesn't contain the original XP install.I can't remember how I got XP on the SATA drive in the first place, I don't appear to have any Hard drive drivers in the case I keep all software CDs in and I'm a bit flummoxed. I can only imagine I just fitted it and loaded the XP install disc but that's at odds with what seems to be happening now.Spent a large part of today Googling but can't find anything that will fix this. so far.I don't want to have to wipe and re-install everything unless there's no option, it's a fast way to kill a couple of days over the holidays.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI'm running Windows XP and want to migrate to another hard drive. I used the excellent open source utility CloneZilla to clone my hard drive to the new drive, and used the equally excellent EASEUS Partition Master to resize the cloned partition to fill the new drive. Next I edited boot.ini on my original Windows to add the cloned drive as another boot option. After a bit of trial and error guessing the disk path for boot.ini I was able to dual boot into the original or the clone.
Now I want to boot off the new drive directly without dual booting off the original drive as I intend to wipe the old drive after I am satisfied that everything is working OK. But here's the catch: the original drive is SATA, while the new drive is IDE. So I can't simply swap the cables around and be done with it. So I configured the boot sequence in the bios to use "HDD-0" instead of "SCSI" (for some reason this old BIOS thinks SATA is SCSI) and restart. The system gets as far as detecting the boot source (floppy first, then CD-ROM) and then stops. No "operating system not found" or any other kind of error, just a blinking cursor and no activity.
I get exactly the same behavior using "HDD-1" to "HDD-3" as the boot drive in the bios. The bios detects the drive itself OK. I have also edited boot.ini on the new drive to point to the same location I used to add it to the dual boot menu on the original drive, but that didn't help. I also booted off the Windows installer, went into Recovery mode and ran Fixmbr and Fixboot with the original SATA drive unplugged and without specifying a device name.
I'am using xp with service pack 2 i am using p4 2.8 ghz with 1024 ram maxtor 80gb hdd when i start my pc the logon screen does not show up if there is a cd/dvd on my dvd drive if i remove the dvd then restart then it's fine
View 12 Replies View RelatedOn New Years eve my PC was working correctly. It detected a Windows Update which was SP3 and I installed it. It then stated that 'in order to take effect it need to reboot', which i did.It shut down as normal but when it starts back up it goes in to a loop. There is a beep from the machine as the screen flickers in to life. The screen then shows it is attempting to start up and I can see the options to enter F8=Boot Opt F12=Set Up Esc=Skip Mem Test. It then shows it is detecting Pri Master, Pri Slave, Sec Master, Sec Slave (i think that is correct), or you could say it is seeing the HDD and CD ROM.At this point it restart and does the same boot sequence over and over again. I have had a look at the time in BIOS and that is fine. I have tried to boot from the Windows disk. When I boot from the Windows disk it gets to the point where it says 'press any key to boot from CD', at this point the keyboard is frozen, can't even turn number lock on or off.
View 5 Replies View RelatedAlright, just finished putting together my computer, and I get to installing Windows. "Press any key to boot from CD" I do, then setup continues,etc. After the initial setup, it reboots (as it tells me it will). It then gets past the Logo for my motherboard and everything, and gets to "Press any key to boot from CD", now from what Ive read, Im not supposed to press any key, so that it can boot from the Hard Drive. But Ive been waiting here for many minutes, and it will not load. Ive reinstalled Windows multiple times (deleting the old partitions and redoing everything) and it still will not boot XP for the rest of the installation. Help!
View 14 Replies View RelatedRecently I have installed a new motherboard, processor and ram. I have tried to reinstall XP from the CD rom which works, but on reboot to finish instilation the hard drive does not boot what so ever. I transferd my hard drive to my old computer and it boots just fine, does anyone know what could be the issue?
View 6 Replies View RelatedApprox. 3 weeks ago my Toshiba A60 failed to boot. I have used several tools to try to recover the drive but it currently fails to boot or reinstall XP and I would appreciate your advice as to next steps. The problem started after the computer failed to boot one day. I had not noticed any particularly odd noises etc from the HD although it had always been a noisy PC (suspect the fan - it always felt a bit hot). On trying to boot into XP it simply hung. On trying to boot into the DOS prompt it would list the drivers, stop at atisgkaf.sys and then hang. (I understand that atisgkaf.sys may not be driver causing the problem.) I tried reinstalling XP to the C: drive but same result. (Programs are on C:. Data is on D:.)
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