Windows XP Crash

[Guest]

PC was online, it shut down and rebooted when it did so it stop in DOS and
was looking for a boot disk. I put in the CD but was unable to do a recovery.
I made a start up floppy disk off of my laptop, it will boot to A:\ but
cannot find C:\. Any ideas?

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi jec,

a) It cannot stop at DOS because DOS does not exist in an NT system.

b) If you boot to a DOS boot floppy, you will not be able to read C:\ if it
is using NTFS as the file system - DOS cannot read this.

Where exactly does the system boot to? Is there an error message? Does it
get fully through the POST and at least start to load Windows? Have you
tried Safe mode yet? Can you see the hard drive in the system BIOS? Do you
have a regular WinXP CD where you can load the Recovery Console? If not,
see:

Using the WinXP Boot floppy set:
http://www.rickrogers.org/fixes.htm#Boot floppy

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Guest]

Hi Rick,
It stops before it gets to windows and or a safe mode option, I'm looking at
a black screen (like the old DOS) the last 3 lines read-
Boot Failure
Insert BOOT diskette in A:
Press any key when ready_

Do you need the info before those?
thanks

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Jec

You no longer have a working hard drive.. it may have lost its ability to
boot because it just did, and it may have lost the ability because of a
serious hardware malfunction within the drive..

What you should do now is get yourself another drive, and re-install XP..
put your old drive back in when all is up and running, and download and run
hard drive diagnostics on it..

You might also want to contact the vendor if your system is under warranty..
you may be able to get a new drive from them.. having said that, there is
nothing like a two drive system where important stuff is not on the drive
which crashed out.. a slave drive is never under pressure like a primary
boot drive, and is far less likely to crash out.. that is not to say that
slaves never do..