Need Help Fast Computer Boot Up Issue

[adrianhaslett]

Yesterday I went arround to fix someones computer on arrival she explained that winxp is loading up fine but you can't get into any programs at all except the internet if you double click on something anywhere it will not respond anyway due to her having no virus protection I said a reinstall might be in order this is what I done all by the book inc. deleting and reinstalling partitions etc. all was fine I updated everything and everything was rossy, I went home and 2 minutes later I get a call, She had just turned the computer back on and nothing except operating system not found was displaying, I've had a look and I can't get the computer to boot from any drive inc. floppy or cd drives. HELP!! I've checked biosd settings and the boot order is correct inc. floppy first.

[Digitalic]

Have you checked during the post if the HD is being detected? If you opened the case for some reason check the IDE cables to make sure it has a good connection and that the jumper settings are correct.

Might even try a known good IDE cable.

[macko72]

You can try to " Load Optimased Defaults" in BIOS if cabels are good, and even download diagnostic tool from hers HDD manufacturer website and run tool to test HDD !!!

[adrianhaslett]

I think the hard drives gone I swopped it with a good one and it booted up but won't allow me into windows just keeps restarting, I tried another drive and got Windows Protection Error is this normall i.e can you just put a drive in with windows on it and load it up or does things stop you doing this?
Also I've noticed that when the hard drive does not work neither does the a: or other drives?

[Digitalic]

At the very least just popping a drive containing a version of windows from another board most likely won`t boot because the IDE controller is more than likely different, not to mention the miriad of other hardware\controller issues that could crop up.

I was assuming you reinstalled an NT based OS but the Windows Protection Error sounds W9x, an NT based system puts up an ugly blue screen with a stop error. Could you clarify please and post the exact message you get?

OK, I originally suspected the HD because it did not report a non system disk or NTLDR is missing error. In other words, the boot process went through the normal preliminary drive checks looking for boot files on the A:\ drive, CD Rom, or whatever other options you may have and finding none then looked for the HD and found....No OS. usually this indicates a bad drive, ribbon cable, mis-configured drive, etc.

When you refer to the other drives not working when the hardrive doesn`t, do you mean they aren`t detected during post?

If you can clairfy these questions it would help greatly.

[adrianhaslett]

All Fixed now and thank you for your help, I shoved a new HD Drive in it and reinstalled windows and it worked fine, before that the other drive was only detected once every so often. I did start pulling my hair out though because when I installed the new drive it was not reconizing it at all after a few clumps of hair I noticed the ide cable from the motherboard was not secure after that all worked fine.

You was right about the other HD Drives I tested one was windows98 and one was windows xp the one with win98 produced the protection error message and the one with xp just kept rebooting.

[el_novato]

Just an FYI...

I've run into the same problem twice...I had installed an OS and upon boot up it said the OS was not found. I changed the boot order so that it would boot from the HDD first and that solved the problem both times. The other HDDs that you tried most likely didn't work because they had a previous installation on them therefore the drivers were not the same for the motherboard.

e.n.