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[pipefighter]

I have a system I build several yaers ago as follows:
AbitIc7-G MB, 1024 MB SDRAM, Award Bios 05/01/03,Radeon 9600 Video Card,
Maxtor 60gb IDE HD,Intel Pentium 3 Chip overclocked to 3.454, cpu temp at 39c at idel. All has been well for two years then out of the blue I would come in and the system had rebooted and it would get past checking DMI Data pool and then message ERROR LOADING OS. at first I thought it was a hard drive problem so I would reset the cable and all would be fine. So I replaced the ribbon and had no problem for several months. Today It started again. This time no amount of cable fiddling would help. I was going to do a repair of XP PRO so went in to bios change boot order to boot from cd first. now as long as I have XP PRO disk in cd drive system will come to question do you want to boot from cd, if I leave it alone it will boot form HD and all is well. I did not do a repair for program disk. Any Ideas. Thanks

[GaryRouth]

Before trying any repairs - why not run some diagnostics (test the memory and hard drive) and scan for viruses. I'd run these with the system set to stock speeds, too.

Also - while in the Bios, check that the Bios is able to keep the system date & time OK ... if not, you might need to replace the Bios battery (often a 3v 2032 coin battery, but there are others).

Overclocking can corrupt files (usually overheating helps things along) - so you might check that dust hasn't accumulated to make the system have trouble under stress or when on for extended periods (you can use a can of compressed air to blow out the dust).

Depending on whether it's just boot.ini or the MBR that's damaged, you can try bootcfg/rebuild, fixboot, or fixmbr from the XP Recovery Console for repairs. These can be a tricky tools to use (notice how often the warnings that "all data can be lost" are used) - so a good look at Microsoft's cautions is a good idea http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;314058

If it's a damaged MBR, one quick fix that works sometimes for simple systems (only one hard disk, few partitions, no Partition Magic/DiskImage/Ghost/DiskManager type MBRs in use) is to find a WinMe bootdisk from http://www.bootdisk.com and use the "fdisk/mbr" command (without the quotes). Do not try this if you haven't backups - - - in case this doesn't work for your system. When it works, it only takes a minute.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[P.S. -- I know it seems odd to use a Win9x tool to fix a WinXP problem, but the fdisk/mbr fix has worked for a surprising number of XP users. . . ]

[pipefighter]

Thanks Gary I upgraded the Bios and all seems well Thanks again