On 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.
I 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 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.
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!). 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?
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.
Alright, 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!
Recently 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?
Approx. 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:.)
I just got done putting together my new computer, and now i am running into a problem installing windows. it starts the whole windows installation, does the formatting and copies the stuff into memory, but when it tries to restart and begin the windows installation process, it wont boot to the HD. I just keeps trying to boot to cd, even i i set HD as first boot, it will still boot from CD and begin the windows formatting part of the installation all over again. If i take the cd out, it will just sit there at "Booting from CD" and do nothing. There are 4 sata connectors (im using 1 sata HD) and i have tried all 4. Btw, this is my first time working with SATA.
I am having problems with a new install of windows XP pro on a fresh HD/new computer. The systemboots OK from the CD and the O/S formatted the HD (137 gig only but I know this problem can be fixed with SP1...)and installed XP, but at the first re-boot (before the XP GUI setup) it would not boot from the HD and re-booted from the CD. i have been round this loop 3 or 4 times already with no luck - I've tried every configuration of Booting in BIOS setup. I tried XP recovery console but could find any way to fix this.
After installing SR3 Win xp Prof will not boot. I had gotten a partial boot but as Win xp installs the system resets. I have tried a repair with the OS CD using the "R" option, but receive the message: "The system does not appear to have a Control set key.The system registry key may be damaged." I also have gotten the message: "Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt windowssystem32configsystem " I hope I do not need to do a complete system reinstall with all my apps and drivers
My system has been acting up for a while. I can not log to the net nor do much with out one error or another popping up. I did reinstallation of windows (xp-pro sp2) still did not solve the problem. I then partition the HD and install powerquest partitionmagic, and tried to delete the old partition after reformatting it has failed. I also change the format from FAT32 to NTFS. The whole operation went fine until when the system tried to reboot. All I have after then was a black screen.I then tried installing the xp after changing the BIOS to boot from the CD. The system then start booting from the CD, then my problem start because I have no clue on DOS commandsThe next thing that appears on the screen is:- The IBM Personal System/2 mouse Program.
I'm having problems with my computer and I need some help desparately. My machine is basically unuseable, and I need to get it back up and running as soon as possible, so any helpful input would be greatly appreciated. Appologies in advance if I'm a bit verbose, but I want to be as clear as possible.I'll start off by mentioning that not all of the info in this story might be relevant, and that I'm just telling it in the event that it could be. A short time ago I bought 512 MBs of RAM and installed it, and it seemed to work fine. Also around that time, presumably through running a registry cleaning utility or something, I'd accidentally disabled a lot of Windows XP tools like Defrag or the Search function in Windows Explorer (some necessary files were missing in the System32 folder).
Shortly after this (lets say 2 days) I decided it was about time I reformat my computer, or rather, start a new XP install on a 200gb HD I'd bought some time earlier but never really used. However, this HD had two FAT partitions on it with a Win98 install, so I run Partition Magic to repartition/reformat it into a single NTFS partition - however PM seemed to have trouble with this - though when I checked it later on a friend's computer with the Windows Scandisk, it was ok. Anyway, shortly after this point, Windows starts acting all screwy. I mean resetting without warning, left and right. It had always done this once every few days, and I never found a cause so I learned to live with it, but now it was doing it after 10 minutes of running XP.
That was all background information that may not be relevant - now moving on the the actual problem. Removing all HDs but the 200gigger, I try installing XP on it (with the intention of partitioning/reformatting it using the installer instead of Partition Magic). However, the install does not get past the initial stage with the blue screen, freezing at a line saying "Starting windows..." or something to that effect, after it'd scanned my comp. I try this several times, no dice, freezes at the same point.
Not having any ideas, I put back in my old 80GB XP HD. It refuses to boot. It gets to the point just before it shows the XP loading screen with the icon and freezes (I believe it's a horizontal bar of ascii blocks). So, I decide maybe to try installing XP on the 200GB using a friend's comp, and do so with much success (also reformatted and Scandisked it with no issues btw) - it boots fine on his comp and I was very much happy. I bring it home, and lo and behold, it won't boot - it gets to that same damn ascii loading bar. If I skip out on it with a reset, I do get the "Hey dude Windows couldn't load, do you want to start in safe mode or something?" sort of message, and nothing on that works. When I start in safe mode, it counts down to a file called pud.inf, or something like that (I'm writing this at work right now for obvious reasons, so I can't check it) - I'm assuming that's the last file safe mode loads up before running Windows. Basically, I can get to whatever is exactly before showing the graphical XP loading screen with the Windows logo - all my computer ever displays is made out of ascii text, no graphics of any kind other than the motherboard splash screen on bootup. The problem is probably with my computer and probably not the HDs, but what it is and how to fix it is beyound my understanding.
This makes about the 6th time I have done the install. When it boots, it hangs for between 10 and 30 minutes at the XP splash screen. The blue bar just goes back and forth but nothing happens like forever. I had tried to replace my HDD as well with an WD SATA 320G HDD, but the bios won't detect it. I tried installing a 40G HDD that had 27G of free space on it. I had been using it as a secondary until my primary went TU last week. I kept running into the problem of it hanging on installation. It would get to the point where it was installing drivers and just stop.
Due to problems that I have been having I went out and bought a new motherboard. I am now running a 1.8G Pentium 4 on an Asis 848P motherboard with 512M DDR Ram. I removed both the 40G HDD and the SATA drive from the system. They are no longer attached. I took a 13G HDD that I had removed to put in a bigger HDD and decided to use it.I did a clean install on the 13G HDD. I formatted it during the installation. Because of the other problems, the only devices that I have connected is the video card, an ATI Raedon 7500, the HDD, keyboard and mouse.The blasted thing still hangs on booting! Because I wanted to know if it happened I activated boot logging and this is what I got.
I am trying to get XP installed onto my old computer.I can boot into UBUNTU Live CD.When the XP CD starts to boot and I get the "press any key to boot from CD". When I press a key, the screen goes black and just sits there.I have tried to burning a new disk and even tried XP 64 bit instead.
A storm knocked out my hard drive (through a surge protector). Dell sent me a replacement and I installed Windows XP on it. I hooked up my old hard drive to try to rescue stuff and, for a few hours, was able to see the corrupted old hard drive because, at one point during the evening among many reboots, the system did a diagnostic on the drive where it repaired sectors and index files, etc. Eventually I could not see the hard drive any more and I don't know how to get these diagnostics to run again since the drive is not even recognized as being there.
Bought a new copy of XP with service pac 3 to put on a p4 with a western digital 300 gig hd. I came back to check to see if the formatting was complete and I had the message "a disk read error has occurred press ctl+alt+del to restart".And when I tell it to boot from cdrom xp disk, it starts "setup is imspecting your computer's hardware configuration" and the screen goes blank after a few seconds and it stops doing anything. I'm afraid the mistake I made was deleting the boot sector partition.
I have recently cloned a drive containing an old win 95 installation to a new PC- reason being i need to retain an old MS DOS database program (service records for my firm). I want to install XP home in dual boot mode so that I can run current software/internet on the same rig...I've done it with Me before no probs...can it be done with Win 95?Also on the same hard drive is another data partition; can I have dual boot with additional FAT32 data partition i.e 3 partitions, two fat 32, one NTFS one of the fat 32 is bootable?
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?
My C: drive crashed and I used that excuse to buy a WD3200 320G SATA drive. My old MB wouldn't support the SATA so I bought a ECS 848P-A and a 512M DDR memory.I tried a new install of XP (Home) onto a 40G drive as primary which had 27G free space. It would only install to the point where the screen was saying installing devices and there was 33 min left on the install. At that point it would stop. The little bar on the lower right would freeze. I left it like this for over 30 min to see if it would clear, it never did. I figured that there might be a problem with stuff on the drive so I removed it and installed a 13G that I had laying around. I formatted it during the install so it should have been clean. It would install and ran until I installed the motherboard and video card drivers. When it went to reboot it would quit. It would go to the XP splash screen and stop. The blue bar would keep cycling but it would never proceed.
I have wanted a new PC for so long, almost 8 years since my last IBM desktop Well my last child is a smarty and she got a ("full boot") paid scholarship to college for upcoming Sept. So wife said go ahead, I bought a Dell, the PC desktop I have always wanted. Now my question, I have had the Dimension E-510 for about a month, I love it, really, from day I took it out of box just perfect! It has XP's Media OS on it. It also has so much "junk" I'm wondering if I should do a Clean Install of the OS. I bought the Operating System on a CD when I purchased the PC. Am I nuts or should I just leave well enough alone? I didn't get a Floopy drive so I guess I would just Boot with the OS CD in it.
My company was messed up so I decided to clean reinstall xp pro, my hard drive was split into 3 partition, C, E backup and L photos and bits, at the point of the install were you decide,delete our make partitions, I decided to delete L as it was not needed and clean install onto C, leaving E with my docs and data
The install went fine, when I looked at my drives in admin tools the C is marked boot and E system, I was going to delete E and make new partitions, but because it marked as system, can not delete it.How did I do this and is there away to put it all back onto C, without reformatting
how to boot from CD on a Travel mate 2410 so I can install a fresh copy of Win XP, the problem is Ive changed / unchecked some of the start up settings in MS Config, re-booted and now the laptop loads with missing files such as: winlogon, dlls missing etc, then re-sets, Ive tried safemode but still show missing start-up files, F2 for (Phoenix Recovery Bios Utility) but dont know the password, tried comos, phoenix, 000000 and bios as the password but with no luck.
My brother got a virus and ended up deleting too many files. His computer wont boot except in safe mode and is completely useless, becuase his anti-virus deleted everything. He go the computer from a friend but didn't recieve a copy of the xp install CD. I have been trying to install xp using an ISO burned onto a CD but so far I have waisted 4 CDs becuase the ISO were just Service pack 2 updates and not the install version. Does anyone have a link to an install ISO or something similar that will allow me create a Install Disc.
Couple of days ago I installed sp2 from an old magazine CD and the installation failed for some reason. Did system restore and had another go today. Went to download sp2 from MS site and had to install 61 updates for SP1 first. all ok so far. Then downloaded sp2 and apparently succeeded but once again - as before- the machine fails to boot.Initial windows flash screen runs for a few seconds then reboots. "windows failed to load" message" appears. Choose safemode and it runs ok. Disable loads of hardware in device manager..still no luck. Ran msconfig and tried "diadnostic mode" loading only basic drivers and services. No change. So decided to use "sytem restore" to at least get it running again but all the system restore points have gone http://images.techguy.org/smilies/eek.gif
I recently added a new sound card to my old computer. I have had this computer for nearly 3 years with zero problems. I installed a new sound card and installed the drivers. I now get through the mobo boot screen, then blackness, no BSoD, no Windows splash screen, nothing, just black. The computer is continuing to send a signal because the monitor does not go into power saving mode, but nothing happens after that. I've gone into BIOS and it is recognizing my HDD and my CD-ROM. I have tried booting from the disk, but the same thing happens, and yes, this is a legit copy made by MS.
Does 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.
I just built a computer today, and I'm trying to install Windows XP Pro with SP2. The CD boots fine, but once I have done the initial setup I get a Disk Boot Error every time I restart, unless I manually intervene and again boot from the CD (in which case I can finish the installation and everything works fine, except that I can only boot from the CD).I have done some searching, but although lots of people have had similar problems, I'm not finding a solution that works for me.
I'm stumped. Here's the case: I'm trying to install XP, but when I boot from the cd, everything is fine right until the second part of the install ("Press enter to continue installation"). After the preliminary copying of files, I just get a UNMOUNTABLE BOOT DEVICE-error.Here's the full story: I'm running Vista as my primary OS, but as I'm having some trouble with drivers (amazing, right?), I thought, I'd try an install of XP on a different HD. So I tried an install and got the error.I thought, okay, it's Vista messing up. I then unhooked the IDE HDD I was trying to install XP to and tried again, just to rule it out. Got the error again. I then unhooked the SATA drive Vista is on, leaving only the cd-rom and the IDE HDD in the comp. This time I thought it would work without problems, but no, I got the error again! I've tried 3 different IDE drives, 1 at a time of course, but I get the error everytime.
I've tried changing the cables, switch master and slave, looked at every option in the BIOS and used a RAID driver I got off my mobo manufacturers site (I don't see why that would help, as the SATA drive wasn't even used, but I had to try!).I've searched the internet high and low, and sure enough, there's a lot of experince with this error out there, but NONE AT ALL have gotten it during an install.Most solutions claim a chkdsk /r using recovery console might help, but as I can't get to the recovery console, I can't try it through XP... I can still boot Vista without any problems, so I ran a chkdsk /F /R using that, but no errors were found... But I'm starting to rule out the fault being in the HDD - I've simply tried too many different ones for that to be the case!
I have a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 mobo, and I'm starting to think, this might be needing an update, but as there are three different revisions of this mobo, and I can't determine which one mine is, I can't find the correct update.I tried the online updater Gigabyte offers, but it only sugested som minor drivers for my LAN and audio card, which is already working perfectly. I usually manage to fix these problems by searching the net, but this time I'm completely lost! I know this is my first post here, but I really hope, someone is able to help me.
Wanted to put my spare computer to use. It previously had Win XP Home on it. Last week I installed Windows 7 beta to have a look, however after realising I would be unable to connect it to the internet due to security restrictions with my University Internet service provider. I decided to install Win XP Pro with the plan to dual boot it with ubuntu. (btw I was very impressed with my short look at Windows 7.) I deleted all partitions and made a new one on my master disk and formatted to NTFS. Installation went fine. However after the compulsory installation reboot the Windows Loading splash screen apears but nothing happens, I never even see the loading bar. I have now tried to install win xp pro a number of times, I am unable to boot in to safe mode, I have performed CHKDSK in the recovery console and FIXBOOT, however to no avail. I'm really stumped as to why I can't get windows to load, I the know the disc is fine as it has been used successfully in the past.
I have a dell 2400,2.2 gig cpu, 512 ram, that I just put a new hard drive(40 gig) in,I installed winxp pro ,but the computer will not boot from hard drive,I went to repair console on the win xp cd,and typed fixmbr, then when it said it had done that I again typed fixboot, but it still will not boot,
