XP only boots with XP boot disc in drive

[Nightdrive]

XP only boots with XP boot disc in drive

I've seen this on various forums, and I can't find an answer.

Background

1) System was working fine except for an unrelated problem about not being
able to reboot (system hung at 'shutting down' message) Strangley, could
shut down and poweroff fine, just not reboot. I'll save that for another
thread.
2) Performed Repair installation to try and fix problem in (1) (didn't fix
it)
3) Now, will only boot when XP bootable CDROM is in drive.

Assumption

I assume that when XP disc is in drive, and BIOS set to boot from CD first,
the system boots from the CDROM without asking (i.e. the BIOS/PC doesn't ask
you, it just does it) then when cd has booted, the WinXP cd instructs "To
boot from CD, press any key". At this point, because the XP initial boot
files have been loaded from the CD, the system has no problem booting from
my C: if you don't press a key.
Without the CD in the drive, some file associated with booting up fails to
load, giving "Non system disk or disk error. Please insert boot diskette"
type of error.

Tried:

FIXMBR
FIXBOOT
Copying boot files from another PC

Possibly related

Drive has had both Norton Ghost, and Imagequest Partition magic used on it
in the past (a long time ago)

It is NOT:
Hardware related, jumper related, cable related. Problem occurred
immediately after Repair install

ANy help appreciated


Greg Woods

 

[Uncle John]

Since you are able to log onto Windows using the hybrid method, use Windows
Help to find out how to use the recovery console. Then
Boot from the CD and select R when it is offered. This will take you into
the Recovery Console and it should then be possible to recover the boot
files.

 

[Nightdrive]

Although I appreciate the time taken to reply, my post should indicate the
level of expertise I'm at (i.e. not a numpty), and reading it properly would
show I have used recovery console, and used FIXMBR and FIXBOOT. Neither
work.
If you have any other ideas though, I'd welcome them.

Greg

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Have you tried "bootcfg /rebuild" in the Recovery Console?
It's supposed to rebuild the boot.ini file, but it might replace
the ntldr and ntdetect.com files as well. BTW, does the
boot.ini file that you copied over look reasonable?

*TimDaniels*

 

[jimbo]

XP only boots with XP boot disc in drive

I've seen this on various forums, and I can't find an answer.

Background

1) System was working fine except for an unrelated problem about not being
able to reboot (system hung at 'shutting down' message) Strangley, could
shut down and poweroff fine, just not reboot. I'll save that for another
thread.
2) Performed Repair installation to try and fix problem in (1) (didn't fix
it)
3) Now, will only boot when XP bootable CDROM is in drive.

Assumption

I assume that when XP disc is in drive, and BIOS set to boot from CD first,
the system boots from the CDROM without asking (i.e. the BIOS/PC doesn't ask
you, it just does it) then when cd has booted, the WinXP cd instructs "To
boot from CD, press any key". At this point, because the XP initial boot
files have been loaded from the CD, the system has no problem booting from
my C: if you don't press a key.
Without the CD in the drive, some file associated with booting up fails to
load, giving "Non system disk or disk error. Please insert boot diskette"
type of error.

Tried:

FIXMBR
FIXBOOT
Copying boot files from another PC

Possibly related

Drive has had both Norton Ghost, and Imagequest Partition magic used on it
in the past (a long time ago)

It is NOT:
Hardware related, jumper related, cable related. Problem occurred
immediately after Repair install

ANy help appreciated


Greg Woods

Fixmbr and fixboot should have reinstalled the boot files and rewritten
the mbr. The message about non system disk indicates a problem with the
boot sector or missing system files from C:\, both of which should have
been fixed when you ran fixmbr and fixboot. Are you sure you completed
those steps properly?

Your hard drive may be damaged, or I have seen reference to a boot
sector virus somewhere.

Good luck, jimbo

 

[Uncle John]

NightDrive
Nobody said you were a numpty. While you did say that you had used two
commands from the Recovery Console your post suggested that you do not know
everything about using it, which is why I suggested you access Windows Help
to learn some more, in particular lift the restriction on copying to the
floppy drive etc before you go into the Console.

To install the Recovery Console put your Windows CD in the optical drive
you use for installations
Start -> Run -> and where "D" is the drive letter of your system drive type

D:\i386\winnt32.exe /cmdcons

When the Console is installed from within Windows
Go Start -> Run -> and type secpol.msc
Navigate to \Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options
Double-click the Recovery Console Entry:Allow floppy copy and access to all
drives and folders, click enabled and then click OK

This gives you the option to start the Recovery Console when your PC fails
to boot without security restrictions.

For a detailed way of how to get your old registry back you can follow the
steps given in the link below:

www-biology.ucsd.edu/computerservices/registryfix.html

 

[Nightdrive]

Yes, tried that too. It simply added another entry to the boot.ini file, and
left the existing entry in place. Both entries were correct anyway when
examined. Thanks for suggestion though.

Greg

 

[Nightdrive]

Fixmbr and fixboot should have reinstalled the boot files and rewritten
the mbr. The message about non system disk indicates a problem with the
boot sector or missing system files from C:\, both of which should have
been fixed when you ran fixmbr and fixboot. Are you sure you completed
those steps properly?

Your hard drive may be damaged, or I have seen reference to a boot sector
virus somewhere.

Good luck, jimbo

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing you can do wrong with FIXBOOT and
FIXMBR.
The problems only started after a repair install of XP, so prety sure not a
virus or damaged disk.

I'm starting to suspect that Norton Ghost or Powerquest Partition MAgic
(used months ago) may have done something to the boot files that is non
standard, but still worked. Then the XP repair install put everything back
to how it should be, but is incompatible with the changes one of the other
programs made - thereofre no bootup.
It's a vague theory, which I may have to investigate using the
aforementioned programs.

Greg

 

[jimbo]

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing you can do wrong with FIXBOOT and
FIXMBR.
The problems only started after a repair install of XP, so prety sure not a
virus or damaged disk.

I'm starting to suspect that Norton Ghost or Powerquest Partition MAgic
(used months ago) may have done something to the boot files that is non
standard, but still worked. Then the XP repair install put everything back
to how it should be, but is incompatible with the changes one of the other
programs made - thereofre no bootup.
It's a vague theory, which I may have to investigate using the
aforementioned programs.

Greg

I have used both Norton Ghost and Partition Magic many times with no
problems. I have used Ghost to clone an XP drive, then swap out drives
and use the clone as the boot drive with no problems. The only other
thing I can think of is that somehow your XP boot drive has been set
inactive.

Good luck, jimbo