Can't boot to Windows XP install disc

[The Seabat]

Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all.
Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the
neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy.
The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the
restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS.
So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine
and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that
said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could
not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was
talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the
same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there.
I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and
on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!!

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could
use some help on this one. Thank you.

 

[John Doe]

So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the
machine

Hopefully that was successful. When it's all done, be sure he has
a USB drive and knows how to copy important files (like My
Documents) to it from time to time.

Good luck.

 

[Pen]

Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all.
Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the
neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy.
The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the
restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS.
So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine
and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that
said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could
not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was
talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the
same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there.
I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and
on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!!

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could
use some help on this one. Thank you.

Take a look here for tips on XP CD Boot problems.
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm

 

[Paul]

Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all.
Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the
neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy.
The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the
restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS.
So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine
and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that
said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could
not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was
talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the
same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there.
I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and
on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!!

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could
use some help on this one. Thank you.

Did you look around for info on the partition structure ?

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/f/3524/t/19267286.aspx

"First, a utility partition formatted in FAT-16 about 32 MB in size.

Second should be the NTFS partition used for the C drive; this one
will be the largest partition on the drive.

Third should be a FAT-32 partition of two to three Gigabytes in size.
This last is the restore partition."

*******

The answer in that thread, also suggests the OS doesn't boot directly
to the C: OS. It's doing something else first. Like, maybe the utility
partition is some kind of boot manager ?

Sites like this, have more info on dealing with Dells. But this
still doesn't explain why you can't boot from CD.

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.shtml

This thread, mentions pressing F12 to boot from CD. Why, I don't know...

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19249516/19400042.aspx

You can't be in too much of a rush, with some of those machines.

*******

When you receive a machine like that, a Linux LiveCD can be used for
a first look. How careful you have to be, depends on the OS. For
Win7, I'd probably use a Knoppix 5.3.1 DVD, simply because it won't
attempt to write to a partition by default. Using Linux, gives
an opportunity to become familiar with what is currently on the HDD.
For an older machine like the Dimension 3000, even a current Ubuntu
CD might be good enough for a look around.

For an offline AV scan, you can use a CD like this one. Download is 196MB.
You burn that with something like Imgburn or Nero, something that
can convert an ISO9660 into a bootable CD. It will allow you to
example the partitions, but might not have all the tools that
a regular 700MB Ubuntu CD might. You can do a malware scan
with this. But you can also poke around the partitions, like
/discs/C: or the like. This even comes with a web browser, so
while you're booted with that CD, you can continue to do
searches in Google, looking for answers. Older versions might
not have had the web browser included, so there was less opportunity
for incremental exploration.

http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208282163

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all.
Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the
neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy.
The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the
restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS.
So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine
and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that
said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could
not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was
talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the
same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there.
I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and
on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!!

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could
use some help on this one. Thank you.

If it's not booting off an optical disc, a) you've a disc unit with
hardware issues, which may not necessarily limited to the drive, b)
the BIOS is setup wrong, c) the XP disc media is compromised. (But of
course, you already thought to boot with another disc, such as HIREM,
to rule out the first two. Just in case your XP Home is a personal
"safety backup," maybe you wanna talk about disc media factories,
where failure rates come from, and how batches get rebadged before
sold under various brandnames. . .hmmm?)

 

[Don Phillipson]

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile

How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust
the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only
after the OS has been loaded.

 

[Don Phillipson]

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile

How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust
the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only
after the OS has been loaded.

 

[Don Phillipson]

I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of
all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete.

Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the
CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I
took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy.

If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line
that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to
setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this
machine ready for the junk pile

How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust
the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only
after the OS has been loaded.

 

[SC Tom]

How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust
the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only
after the OS has been loaded.

Thought it was that important, to post it three times?

Just messing with you; my ISP does that occasionally, too.

 

[Mike Easter]

"Don Phillipson"

Thought it was that important, to post it three times?

Just messing with you; my ISP does that occasionally, too.

I notice that they have precisely the same time in the Date and/but the
XRef is sequential incrementing by 1; but the mid/s have much more
difference than that from each other, but the first part is still in the
same 'order' as the XRef sequence, considering that numerals must come
before letters as they do in hex if that is some kind of system like
z-base 32 using lowercase.

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