Boot problem - no system (Sony Vaio RA820G)

[davez]

When I boot my system, a Sony Vaio RA820G running XP Media Center,
normally from HDD it fails to boot, with a message 'no system'
displayed.

On booting from CDROM with the ultimate boot CD (UBCD) and selecting the
option 'boot hard drive 1', ie a direct 'boot 0x80' instruction, the
system boots without problem.

I have tried a FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from the recovery console, both to no
avail.

Any suggestions as to how to fix this issue would be appreciated.

The problem first surfaced some months ago when a Windows update was
applied.

Thanks

Dave

 

[philo]

When I boot my system, a Sony Vaio RA820G running XP Media Center,
normally from HDD it fails to boot, with a message 'no system'
displayed.

On booting from CDROM with the ultimate boot CD (UBCD) and selecting the
option 'boot hard drive 1', ie a direct 'boot 0x80' instruction, the
system boots without problem.

I have tried a FIXBOOT and FIXMBR from the recovery console, both to no
avail.

Any suggestions as to how to fix this issue would be appreciated.

The problem first surfaced some months ago when a Windows update was
applied.

looks like the bootsector of the drive is damaged...
however...do you have "virus" protection enabled in the bios?
If so...that will prevent writing to the boot sector...
(though I'd think a message would have been displayed)

another thing to try would be to uninstall the windows update...
though it seems unlikely to have caused such a problem

 

[davez]

looks like the bootsector of the drive is damaged...
however...do you have "virus" protection enabled in the bios?
If so...that will prevent writing to the boot sector...
(though I'd think a message would have been displayed)

I'm running Sophos AV - as far as I can tell, it is not 'enabled in the
BIOS', although it is configured to disinfect boot sectors. A full scan
indicates no virus is present, either on the drive or within the boot
sector.

another thing to try would be to uninstall the windows update...
though it seems unlikely to have caused such a problem

Agreed it seems unlikely, and may merely be coincidental. I can't recall
which update apparantly caused the problem, so I'm inclined not to
uninstall this.

Any suggestions as to a boot utility that may assist with diagnosing and
resolving the bootsector issue? I'm sure this is not a complex issue as
the system behaves correctly once booted from UBCD, but I'd prefer to
run with a 'normal' boot process rather than from an external drive.

Thanks

 

[philo]

I'm running Sophos AV - as far as I can tell, it is not 'enabled in the
BIOS', although it is configured to disinfect boot sectors. A full scan
indicates no virus is present, either on the drive or within the boot
sector.

I was not referring to your AV software...
In the bios there is usually an "anti-virus" option which prevents a write
to the boot sector.
Have a look in the bios and see if there is such an option and if it's
enabled.
If so...disable it as it would prevent fixboot or fixmbr from writing to the
bootsector
(though as i mentioned, you'd prob get a warning message)

 

[davez]

I was not referring to your AV software...
In the bios there is usually an "anti-virus" option which prevents a write
to the boot sector.
Have a look in the bios and see if there is such an option and if it's
enabled.
If so...disable it as it would prevent fixboot or fixmbr from writing to the
bootsector
(though as i mentioned, you'd prob get a warning message)

Checked BIOS - no AV option appears to be present.

 

[philo]

Checked BIOS - no AV option appears to be present.

it looks like the bootsector of the drive may be bad...

however there's a small possibility something is wrong with boot.ini

i recall once how i had cloned a drive with 3 OS's on it...
but only cloned two of them...

fixboot did *not* fix my bootloader...
i had to manually edit boot.ini to get things to work...


if XP is on the first partition of your HD...boot.ini should look something
like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect