Hard drive not booting xp

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brian Louisos
  • Start date Start date
B

Brian Louisos

Ok, here's the situation:

HP computer, about a few years old, with a 60 gig Western Digital hard
drive. Windows XP-pro is installed on it. The machine has not been
turned on in almost a year. Last night I went to try it out, and it
would not boot.

As it was, I'm pretty sure there was a problem with the computer
itself, since not even a bios screen was showing up. Due to fears of
lost data, and to troubleshoot, I took the drive out of the computer
and put it into a known functioning machine.

Installed as a slave, this hard drive works. In XP the folders are
browseable, and everything is fine. The drive however will not boot. On
the software end, I've gone into the bios; the drive is detected
correctly, and designated as the boot drive. The drive contains all of
the 'boot.ini, autoexec.bat', etc etc required for xp. On the hardware
end, I've experiment with different jumper settings, cable arrangements
etc. Still nothing. After bios, the screen hangs for a bit, then says
'Operating system not detected'.

Another important factor is that the hard drive is split into a main
partition and another for recovery. Is it possibled that the system is
looking for an OS on the recovery partition?

So yeah. I'm hoping someone can help me out. Any feedback of
suggestions would be appreciated.
 
HP computers use an OEM version of XP that is tied to the the BIOS.
That is probably why it won't boot on the other computer.
 
Brian Louisos said:
Ok, here's the situation:

HP computer, about a few years old, with a 60 gig Western Digital hard
drive. Windows XP-pro is installed on it. The machine has not been
turned on in almost a year. Last night I went to try it out, and it
would not boot.

As it was, I'm pretty sure there was a problem with the computer
itself, since not even a bios screen was showing up. Due to fears of
lost data, and to troubleshoot, I took the drive out of the computer
and put it into a known functioning machine.

Installed as a slave, this hard drive works. In XP the folders are
browseable, and everything is fine. The drive however will not boot. On
the software end, I've gone into the bios; the drive is detected
correctly, and designated as the boot drive. The drive contains all of
the 'boot.ini, autoexec.bat', etc etc required for xp. On the hardware
end, I've experiment with different jumper settings, cable arrangements
etc. Still nothing. After bios, the screen hangs for a bit, then says
'Operating system not detected'.

Another important factor is that the hard drive is split into a main
partition and another for recovery. Is it possibled that the system is
looking for an OS on the recovery partition?

So yeah. I'm hoping someone can help me out. Any feedback of
suggestions would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

You write "Due to fears of lost data". This should determine your
first step. Back up your data NOW! It seems you did not do this
before - now that disaster is staring you in the face, this is your
last chance. Grab it!

Your next step should be to determine if WinXP is still operative
on this disk. You can easily do it by booting the machine with a
WinXP boot disk. Here is how to make one:
- Format a floppy disk on some other WinXP PC.
Don't do it on a Win9x PC - it won't work.
- Copy these files from the \i386 folder of your WinXP CD to A:\
ntldr
ntdetect.com
- Copy the hidden file c:\boot.ini from the problem disk to
the floppy disk. You could use this command while the
problem disk is a slave disk in a different PC:
type d:\boot.ini > a:\boot.ink
- Boot the machine with this floppy

What do you get?
 
Assuming you have got all the information you wanted from the HD, how
about reformatting it and installing the OS from scratch? This way you
can prove whether it is bootable or not!
 
I read this claim in some other thread a while ago.
When challenged, the author was unable to substantiate
it. Are you absolutely sure that this is the case? Have
you personally dealt with one? If so, what was the exact
PC model?
 
Hey everyone, thanks for the quick responses. Much appreciated.

Pegasus, regarding the data back up-
The data I want to back up was in ...documents and settings/user/...
and was not shared. I can't even get into the folder. The data is
there. Using a Linux live-boot cd, I was actually able to get into the
folder and view the contents. I was not however able to move them to
another drive, mostly due to some permissions with writing to a hard
drive from a live-os. Anyway... I figured my best chance was to try and
Boot it as master, and log in to the account that way.

I'll try your boot disk info. Think it'll work? Like... regular ol' XP
will come up (assuming it was working in the first place)?
-
Longman, Sounds like that oem/hp issue might be at the root of all
this. Ironically, my known functioning pc is an upgraded old HP pc too,
- though it came with win98 originally, and wouldn't have the necessary
support for whatever a 'tied to the bios' OS needs. Thats crazy. First
I've heard of such a thing. So then, in general, might an HP pc's hard
drive, with the original OS on it, not work when put into a new
motherboard if its the primary drive?

If XP is dependent on the original bios, any thoughts for how that
might be circumvented? I'd really rather not flash the bios on my
current machine.

Great lead though. Thanks

-Bri
 
Brian said:
Hey everyone, thanks for the quick responses. Much appreciated.

Pegasus, regarding the data back up-
The data I want to back up was in ...documents and settings/user/...
and was not shared. I can't even get into the folder. The data is
there. Using a Linux live-boot cd, I was actually able to get into the
folder and view the contents. I was not however able to move them to
another drive, mostly due to some permissions with writing to a hard
drive from a live-os. Anyway... I figured my best chance was to try
and Boot it as master, and log in to the account that way.

I'll try your boot disk info. Think it'll work? Like... regular ol' XP
will come up (assuming it was working in the first place)?
-
Longman, Sounds like that oem/hp issue might be at the root of all
this. Ironically, my known functioning pc is an upgraded old HP pc
too, - though it came with win98 originally, and wouldn't have the
necessary support for whatever a 'tied to the bios' OS needs. Thats
crazy. First I've heard of such a thing. So then, in general, might an
HP pc's hard drive, with the original OS on it, not work when put into
a new motherboard if its the primary drive?

If XP is dependent on the original bios, any thoughts for how that
might be circumvented? I'd really rather not flash the bios on my
current machine.
Click to expand...

I'm just going to address the problems you had copying your data with
the Linux live cd and will leave your questions for the others. You can
still get your data with the live cd and should do so before doing
anything else. You didn't say what flavor Linux live cd you used, but
here are instructions for retrieving data with Knoppix:

You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a cd/dvd-rw
OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data. To get
Knoppix, you need a computer with a fast Internet connection and
third-party burning software. Download the Knoppix .iso from
www.knoppix.net and create your bootable cd. Then boot with it and it
will be able to see the Windows files. If you are using the usb thumb
drive, right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to get its properties
and uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then click on it to open it.
Note that the default mouse action in the window manager used by
Knoppix (KDE) is a single click to open instead of the traditional MS
Windows' double-click. Otherwise, use the K3b burning program to burn
the files to cd/dvd-r's.

Unless you have a hard drive formatted FAT32 that you can slave in the
box, don't attempt to write to an NTFS-formatted partition with Linux.
If you do have a FAT32 drive, you can use it as Linux can write to
FAT32 with no problems.

Malke
 
Brian Louisos said:
HP computer, about a few years old, with a 60 gig Western Digital hard
drive. Windows XP-pro is installed on it. The machine has not been
turned on in almost a year. Last night I went to try it out, and it
would not boot.

As it was, I'm pretty sure there was a problem with the computer
itself, since not even a bios screen was showing up.
Click to expand...

Have you replaced the lithium battery on the motherboard?

*TimDaniels*
 
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