pc wants to boot from A:\

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I have a Gateway Select 950 pc with 256 MB RAM and 30 GB Hard Drive. Up until
a couple of days ago I had Windows XP Pro running perfectly on it. The drive
had been partitioned and XP was on C:\. My son seems to have told Windows
Update to go ahead and install SP2. Once he did that, the computer would not
boot up properly - it would go to a black screen and hang. By turning it off
and on, my husband ended up with the Blue screen for a scandisk - which then
hung there. My PCs are networked and shared and I was able to go in through
the network connection and determine that SP2 had been installed and I could
drag across the files we needed to keep. By installing XP onto the other
partition (D:\) I could boot up the computer. I ended up deleting both
partitions, formatting the drive and re-installing XP (2 or 3 times). Now
when I try to boot up, it gives this error:

Drive Not Ready
Insert BOOT Diskette in A:
Press any key when ready

Now, I can only boot up by either using my old Windows 98SE boot diskette in
A: or by putting my XP CD into the CD-Rom. Neither of these options is
preferable. I have already tried the option of changing the boot order in my
BIOS - different errors.

Any suggestions????
 
Hi Jennifer,

When you re-created the partitions, did you make the 1st partition active?

Just a hunch, it sounds like when the PC turns on, it will check the A:
drive and then the CDROM or vice-versa; if nothing is found to be bootable,
then it returns that error.

So if you used FDISK or 3rd party partitioning tool, load it up again and
confirm that the first partition is marked active.

I hope that helps.
 
Hey Jennifer,

Did you confirm if the 1st partition is "Active"?

If you deleted the partitions then this step will have to be done manually
with FDISK.

- Craig
 
Jennifer said:
I have a Gateway Select 950 pc with 256 MB RAM and 30 GB Hard Drive. Up until
a couple of days ago I had Windows XP Pro running perfectly on it. The drive
had been partitioned and XP was on C:\. My son seems to have told Windows
Update to go ahead and install SP2. Once he did that, the computer would not
boot up properly - it would go to a black screen and hang. By turning it off
and on, my husband ended up with the Blue screen for a scandisk - which then
hung there. My PCs are networked and shared and I was able to go in through
the network connection and determine that SP2 had been installed and I could
drag across the files we needed to keep. By installing XP onto the other
partition (D:\) I could boot up the computer. I ended up deleting both
partitions, formatting the drive and re-installing XP (2 or 3 times). Now
when I try to boot up, it gives this error:

Drive Not Ready
Insert BOOT Diskette in A:
Press any key when ready

Now, I can only boot up by either using my old Windows 98SE boot diskette in
A: or by putting my XP CD into the CD-Rom. Neither of these options is
preferable. I have already tried the option of changing the boot order in my
BIOS - different errors.

Any suggestions????
Click to expand...

It might be helpful to stand back for a moment and consider the
standard boot process.

When you instruct the BIOS to use the hard disk as the first boot
device then the boot process looks for a small piece of code in
the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the the primary master disk.

The code in the MBR invokes some further code in boot sector
of the first active partition of the primary master disk.

In the case of Win2000/XP, the code in the boot sector invokes
c:\ntldr which must also be located on the first active partition of
the primary master disk.

If your machine fails to boot from the hard disk then you need
to check/fix the various elements in this boot chain.

1. Instruct your BIOS to boot from your master disk.
2. Make sure that the first partition on your master disk is
set to "active". One way to check/set this is by booting the
machine with a Win98 boot disk, then running fdisk.exe.
3. Make sure you have a standard Windows MBR. One way
to set this is by booting the machine with a Win98 boot disk,
then running fdisk.exe /mbr.
4. Make sure you have the correct WinXP boot sector. One
way to set this is by using your WinXP CD to boot into the
Recovery Console, then running the "fixboot" command.
There is also a "fixmbr" command which could be used
instead of "fdisk /mbr".
5. Make sure that you have these three files:
c:\boot.ini
c:\ntdetect.com
c:\ntldr
You can examine them from the Recovery Console.

If you still don't succeed, post verbatim error messages. Your
statement "I have already tried the option of changing the boot
order in my BIOS - different errors" leaves far too room for
interpretation.
 
FAT16 MBR (pre-W95B), FAT32 MBR (pre-ME), and W2k/XP MBR differ. The
commands 'fdisk /mbr' and 'fixmbr' aren't equal.
 
Jetro said:
FAT16 MBR (pre-W95B), FAT32 MBR (pre-ME), and W2k/XP MBR differ. The
commands 'fdisk /mbr' and 'fixmbr' aren't equal.
Click to expand...

The Win98 command fdisk.exe /mbr will work on any Windows
installation. I suggest you try it for yourself.
 
I faithfully followed all the instructions below and still come up with the
error:

Drive not ready
Insert BOOT disk in A:
Press any key when ready

I had originally deleted the partitions from the method available from the
Windows XP CD and then formatted the drive - unpartitioned. I have
re-formatted again a couple of times. According to fdisk my partition is
active.

I ran fdisk /mbr form the Windows 98SE Boot disk and it claimed to have done
the process. I re-booted and came up with the usual Drive not ready error.

Then I booted from the Win XP CD and went into the Recovery Console and
checked for the 3 files: boot.ini; ntdetect.com; and ntldr - they were there.
I ran fixmbr and it told me that my computer appeared to have a non-standard
or invalid master boot record - so I told it to create a new one which it
did. Then I ran fixboot and it said it did that too. I got out of the
recovery console and rebooted - again getting the Drive not ready error.

Booted from CD again and back into the Recovery console - ran fixmbr again -
no message this time other than it said it performed the function. Ran
fixboot again and it said it performed the function. Got out of recovery
console, rebooted again, and same error! GRRRRRR!

In my BIOS it has been instructed to boot from my master disk. I've tried it
also with quickboot enabled and disabled - makes no difference. I've tried
going into every choice on the BIOS and resetting everything to default -
again, makes no difference...the stupid beast just wants to boot from the A:
drive.

I am at a total loss. This computer happily ran on XP for 2 1/2 years until
this incident.

Any other suggestions???
 
The key appears to be in the first error message you quote:

"Drive not ready"

It says that the boot device specified by the BIOS is not ready
to boot up. This is presumably drive C:. I would now do this,
in no particular order:

- Instruct the BIOS to boot from the primary master disk
only, and not from the floppy, CD drive or anywhere else.
This will confirm which drive is misbehaving.

- Play with the various possibilities that the BIOS gives you
for the drive geometry of your hard disk: Large, LBR etc.

- Have a look at this link:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=320397

- Download & run the disk diagnostic program that your
disk manufacturer makes available freely on his home site.

If this did not fix the problem then I would do this:
- Replace the disk with a small test disk of 1 or 2 GBytes.
Your friendly computer dealer will probably lend you one
for free - they are fairly useless these days.
- Boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com,
partition & format the test disk, then transfer the Win98 system
files with this command:
sys c:
- See if you can boot into a DOS Prompt on the hard disk.

This should tell you a few things about your machine and its
boot environment.

If you cannot easily get another disk then you have to experiment
with your current disk. The exact method depends on the
availability of partition manipulation tools such as PartitionMagic.
Post again with details.
 
How many partitions are on the disk?
Is a 2nd partition still the active one?
Do you want more than one partition?
You can delete & create partitions at the beginning of the CD-install of XP.
 
Any other suggestions???
Click to expand...

Jennifer,

first, upgrade the BIOS of your computer to the latest available
version. The reason is that you want to be sure that the BIOS
has the Extended Int13 services to be able to handle larger hard
disks properly and boot from a hard disk even when the boot
files are not located near the beginning of the disk.

Next thing I'd try is a repair installation of Windows XP into
the first partition, over the original installation. For this
you need a full retail Windows XP installation CD, not an OEM
CD.

Boot from the installation CD. You may have to allow that in the
BIOS again.

First choose to install Windows, not to repair anything.

Only in the second step, after the installer has found your
original installation, select a repair installation for this
installation.

If this does not help, you may have to do a fresh installation,
losing all information on the disk. Boot from the Windows
installation CD and remove all partitions, then install Windows
XP into the empty space.

Unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise, let Windows
install itself into just one partition.

Hans-Georg
 
Any other suggestions???
Click to expand...

Jennifer,

first, upgrade the BIOS of your computer to the latest available
version. The reason is that you want to be sure that the BIOS
has the Extended Int13 services to be able to handle larger hard
disks properly and boot from a hard disk even when the boot
files are not located near the beginning of the disk.

Next thing I'd try is a repair installation of Windows XP into
the first partition, over the original installation. For this
you need a full retail Windows XP installation CD, not an OEM
CD.

Boot from the installation CD. You may have to allow that in the
BIOS again.

First choose to install Windows, not to repair anything.

Only in the second step, after the installer has found your
original installation, select a repair installation for this
installation.

If this does not help, you may have to do a fresh installation,
losing all information on the disk. Boot from the Windows
installation CD and remove all partitions, then install Windows
XP into the empty space.

Unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise, let Windows
install itself into just one partition.

Once you have the computer up and running, do not attempt to
install Service Pack 2 again before reading
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxSP2.htm, particularly the chapters
referring to the probable reasons why your computer is
incompatible. Once you have solved these problems, i.e. made
sure you run a new BIOS and possibly installed the special patch
or disabled DEP, if applicable, you should then install Service
Pack 2.

Hans-Georg
 
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