PC HD Boot Problem

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Dave1975

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Hi guys,

I'm hitting my old PC problem again! The boot order on my PC is going wrong, in the BIOS screen for boot order it's setting itself as;

1. <NONE>
2. CD/DVD Drive
3. Hard Drive

I try changing it to HD first, and it just loops round and brings up the 'failed to start windows' screen.

Anyone got any ideas? Worried that my HD might have failed.. :(
(On my gf's laptop atm)

Thanks,
Greg
 
Windows, windows, windows....

Tim over to you fella.

Best of luck with your problem Greg.

You could always ask those friendly people at PC World.
Doh!
 
Well you brought a smile to my face if nothing else Typo, the best bit is I'm pretty much snowed in! Went to goto my basketball game last night and had to leave my car in town, as cars were getting stuck on any slight hill + more snow last night + snowing now = me going nowhere soon!!

From searching around I think it's a power supply problem but could be wrong, so not down to Windows this time :)
 
LOL If I had a leopard I'd be on my way to North Shields with it to wipe the smug grin off your face right now!! :p
 
Just give me a few weeks to train him up, then we'll be there!!

baby_leopard.jpg
 
Greg is this machine a dual boot or a partitioned machine? Have you managed to load it in safe mode with no networking? :)
 
Not that I know of! and no won't boot in safe mode with or without networking, won't even boot with last known good configuration/settings :(
 
Do you have your windows boot disk? as Windows might need to be repaired, i'm sorry to say Greg. Does the HDD have a lot of stuff on it you need to keep?
 
Just been searching for that Chris, think I've got it, and not too bad on HD front, most of it was backed up on external HDD, have unplugged that now so fingers crossed everything on there is OK at least. Thanks.
 
If you find you have lost some data you could try using SpinRite on it... If SpinRite can see the drive then it will probably be able to make it bootable so you can get the data off.
 
my other option for getting the data out of the drive if you need to completely format / rebuild the machine to make it work would be to parallel port it from one machine to another, making your not happy PC the slave machine to the other so it can be seen as an extra external HDD then copy everything off :) then format it or bin it :)
 
Thanks guys, fingers crossed the data is OK, and like I say mostly backed up in anycase, still trying to get the Windows restore/boot CD to run...
 
Assuming I'm reading everything right

The boot order not setting is nothing to do with windows or the power supply, it sounds like the cmos battery is dead (its the flat battery on the motherboard), replace and reset the settings and it should be good.

Not booting sounds like an issue my neighbour had which was the mbr tables are screwed which usually mean a reinstall.

If you want to get old data two options, second hard drive with new install on or a linux live boot os (ie runs from optical) and then copy off the data etc
 
Hi Levi,

Thanks for the reply, I start it up and it goes to the black screen that says Windows wasn't shut down properly, and gives you the options to start in safe mode, safe mode with networking, last good config/settings, which ever option I chose it then does the following, starts loading up drivers..

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS\System32\Drivers\etc.

Runs through them and gets to ..\Drivers\Mup.sys and just freezes there?
Have been searching around and Mup.sys could be a number of different things by sounds of it... still can't get the XP Restore CD to run even when I set CD-ROM as the first in boot order.

Any ideas welcome! :)
Thanks, Greg
 
First can anyone with windows xp upload their mup.sys file to the forum for greg - only take from regs :) and then using the linux live distro I suggested use it to get your files and then replace the missing file.

I'm not going to guarantee this will work but it's worth a shot :)

I'd say you need a cmos battery still too.

NB: I'm working from head here as I've not actually experienced this issue myself.
 
Tried replacing the CMOS battery with a spare I found in the house, and receive the error "CMOS checksum error" so assuming that the battery I found is dead! Would it not be giving me that error up if the original battery was low or empty?
 
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