No Bootable Devices Detected (XP Pro)

[Dakkon]

My neighbor has a Dell Inspiron 9200, that will not boot up Windows XP Pro. The error message that pops up after the post screen says there are 'No Bootable Devices Detected'. However the hard drive is detected in the BIOS, and theres only 1 partition which Windows says is active.

Now here's the weird part, Windows will boot if the Windows Installation CD is in the CD-Rom drive. I can take out the CD and operate windows fine after boot up. Here's what I've tried so far:

1) Recovery Console - Bootcfg /rebuild, fixboot, fixmbr
2) Windows Repair Installation

I want to try and avoid reformatting if at all possible. Any ideas or suggestions??

[EzyStvy]

In Disk MGMT, if you right click on the C drive, is the "mark partition as active" option grayed out?

[Dakkon]

Originally Posted by EzyStvy In Disk MGMT, if you right click on the C drive, is the "mark partition as active" option grayed out?

Yep, the option is grayed out. However there is a 3.5GB FAT32 segment on the same partition that says Unknown, but I was told this is either system recovery or the dell utitilies partition.

[EzyStvy]

Might see if the boot.ini file looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

[Dakkon]

Originally Posted by EzyStvy Might see if the boot.ini file looks like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

Looks exactly like that except with partition(1) in both places

[EzyStvy]

Before proceeding with my "guess," see if the two referenced HIDDEN files are in the root of C. (C:\)

Copy the Ntldr and the Ntdetect.com files from the I386 folder on the Windows XP Setup CD-ROM, Windows XP Setup floppy disk, or from a computer that is running the same version of Windows XP as the computer that you want boot.