ManateeUK said:
Many Thanks, I tried that but it does nto make any difference,
whatever the boot order it always comes up with the same error. As it
will not boot from teh CDRom, it looks as if I willl have to remove
the hard drive and reformat it before reloading XP.
If you have the system boot order set correctly but it will not boot,
then it isn't finding any boot files on the cd (which makes sense
because you aren't trying to boot from cd) or the hard drive. This
usually means your hard drive has 1) died; 2) or the drive hasn't died
but the Windows boot files are missing; 3) the drive is OK but the
motherboard drive controller has died.
Usually if the drive is healthy and seen in the BIOS and the Windows
boot files are missing, you'll get an error saying something like
"NTLDR is missing" though.
Is the hard drive seen in the BIOS? Since you have a Dell, run the Dell
Diagnostics on the drive and the motherboard. If the drive is not seen
in the BIOS, you can try taking it out and putting it in another system
to test it. If the other system can't see the drive, then you know the
drive is faulty and not the motherboard connection in the original
machine.
If you don't have another computer and/or computer skills to do the work
yourself, take the machine to a professional computer repair shop for
diagnosis.
Malke