Laptop Won't Boot / Can't Change Boot Order / Cd Drive Just Clicks
Nov 5, 2007
I 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.
fitted a new hard drive due to virus and want to reinstall windows but went into bios to change boot order but it wont let me it has enter in red alongside all i can do is press it it wont let me go anywhere else.
I am receiving the error message about missing or corrupt file and have seen many "fixes" posted on the web. But my trouble is a little different. I have the XP install DVD and when I put it in the computer and start it up it doesn't do anything different, i have tried to change the boot setup (F12 i think upon startup) and try to prioritize it to the number one spot, but it doesn't save the change (although it does look like the drive light is on during startup. I can't boot it up in Safe Mode or any of the options that appear on that screen. Everything I try takes me back to the black screen that says something along the lines of insert the original install disk and press R to go to the restore menu. I cant' get the thing to boot from the DVD. To note - on the screen where you can change the boot order, it doesn't say DVD drive it says CD but the drive came with the computer.
Is there anyway to see the BIOS boot order (1st CD, 2nd Floppy, 3rd HDD) through windows XP (possibly a registry key or something)? I ask because I need to make sure all of the computers in my department are set to HDD first and not CD incase they have a non-bootable CD in the drive and a power outage (or Windows Update) causes a reboot.don't want to goto every computer, and would like to do this all remotely.
What happened was recently my computer restarted out of nowhere when I was browsing the internet. When my computer restarted, it would not go past the windows loading screen and just reset (blue screen of death). I tried going into safe mode however, nothing seems to work other than booting Windows into 'debugging mode' and everything works fine.I'm trying to correct this problem by possibly using the Windows XP CD to repair Windows. Here's when I run into another problem. The Windows XP CD simply will not boot. I've tried changing the boot order in the bios but the 'press <any> key to boot from CD' will always be skipped no matter what. I've even tried different DVD/CD drives and different Windows XP CDs.
I am trying to upgrade the hard drive in a Thinkpad x60 laptop. I have a WD 120 gb SATA drive that I have tried to install with the Data Lifeguard tools. This does give you an option of installing the new drive as the new boot device, which is what I used. I did the installation with the drive attached to a USB port and an external enclosure.I have done this before with desktops without any problems. For this go around, the files seem to be copied correctly but the drive won't boot. I just get a blinking cursor. The drive is recognized when I attach is as an external drive.
I recently added a 300 GB external USB2 hard drive to serve as a backup and general storage repository. Before connecting the drive, the system was booted. Once connected, the drive functioned flawlessly. However, after system shutdown the next boot failed with "no boot disk found," which was easily traced to the external drive.
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?
Before my latest power supply, when my computer booted, it would show the Welcome screen, then play the boot-up sound, then load the desktop. Now there is no boot sound cue until after the desktop loads. Is this something to be concerned about?
I 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.
I 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.
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).
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:
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.
There are numerous applications such as McAfee, etc. and other McAfee components in the startup, my question is, can you change their order in startup and therefore control which ones activate first to last? And by doing this can or would you be able to improve any amount of the startup performance?
I'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
Have XP Home Edition with all current updates. Do not have toolbars locked. By mistake, moved the whole Quick Launch Taskbar and lost it. When I went to Start > Properties > and enabled Show Quick Launch, I got it back with all my icons. The problem is that they are no longer displayed in the order that I want and I can not drag them to change the order. Sometime in the past, I was able to drag them to change their rder. Again, I do not have the toolbars lock set. I went to my application dataMicrosoftIEQuick Launch and changed the sort order of the folder but it did not change the display order when I rebooted the system.
I am unable to boot my PC most of the times.Whenever I switch on my PC,I see the following message nine ot of ten times. DiskError/Boot Faliure Reboot and select proper boot device or insert Boot media in selected boot device If I press enter after this messages & keep pressing following messages appear from time to time (Not simultaneously). If just after making the switch on, I press F2 key to check the boot device preference
If just after making the switch on , I press f11 key to reach the boot menu I always find the 1.44 MB Floppy option highlighted as the booting choice.(though there had not been any floppy in the floppy drive, I dont have any really)I make the hard disk option highlighted & it solves the problem only a few times. But next time when I try F11 key to check the boot menu again I find 1.44 MB floppy highlighted.
I have had a similar post before but the difference now is the Blue Screen comes up immediately. I tried to boot in safe mode and the last known good boot and neither works.
when i start up my laptop, it gets to the windows XP loading thing, it loads, and to contact my administrator and all that jazz it won't boot up in safe mode or anything either, and it was working fine just last night.
I have a laptop that can't boot up.Normally I would run the recovery console and proceed from there, except I don't have the original cd to boot from. Can I use any XP Home or XP Pro to boot and use the recovery console from there or must it be the media centre cd? Also, all the material point to copying file(s) from c:windows e pair system
Need to re-boot with CD to get to recovery console, and when I get to the boot menu CD/CD-ROM is in the # 3 spot and I can't get it to move to the # 1 spot. when I get to the boot menu, all I'm able to do is move the curser up/down to highlight the 3 choices but not change the sequence. Now i can't change the boot sequence.
I'm trying to get back to factory install with XP on an Acer Travelmate 8100. Have all the recovery disks, but only thing is the f2 key doesn't work. I need this to make it boot from the CD and get back to how it was when I first bought it.
I can't change the boot sequence in xp pro i get to the bios but when i go to change the first boot process and presses enter nothing happens
I logged on as admin and has done this before with this machine but now nothing happens my feeling is she has some kind of virus or somthing as her machine is quite slow but the anti virus program is not respondind neither is the restore option and im sure other programs
I want to use my restore disk but if i can't change the boot sequence how can i run it?
I have two older IBM 300PL computers and I want to change the boot sequence but I cannot figure out how to get into the BIOS. So far I have not found it anywhere and I have searched and I have tried to scour the setup options by pressing F1 right from the beginning. I am trying to load in a new OS, but if I cannot get it to boot off of the A,D, and then C, then it won't work. How to change the boot sequence in one of these IBM computers?
I used partition magic 8 to essentially resize a partition (smaller) and add a new partition. The system rebooted after a reboot request. then when it restarted, it asked to reboot again. I said Ok, no problem. Then when it rebooted again, when trying to start up , it went to a black screen that said "windowssystem32configsystem is currupt or missing". Im a designer, not a tech guy, but im thinking that the repartition software may not have recorded (updated partition info file?) properly, and now the system doesnt know where the windows OS is? Pleeese help - im afraid to use the repair console, and tried to reinstall windows over the current system (as a last resort) but it said it cant do that either because a certain folder did not exist. Note im on my laptop now (problem on desktop).What do you think and what can i do? Do i need to put another HD in my computer with windows on it, boot to it, and manipulate the problem ( currnt drive) with the newley added drive with windows on it? I have no idea, just a thought. I'll be happy to provide any further details. Please help me out.
