W2k does'nt boot

[kan]

Inspirion 8000 with W2k does'nt boot.
It says it is loading OS and then the blue screen with no error messages.It does'nt move further.Any thoughts
Kan

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Read the first (fixed) post in this forum, will probably answer your question.

 

[kan]

thanks realblackstuff,
I had tried doing the system repair.All it does is run a maintanence check on the hard disk which is very weird and then reboots from harddisk.Again back to same problem.

I also tried installing a fresh copy of the OS above the previous OS with the file system left intact .It did the same thing.All it did was run a check on the hard disk and nothing more than that.

One other wierd thing I noticed was when I tried installing a fresh copy of the OS in a different folder(C:\WINNT2) than the previous OS installion.The setup did not complete and did not create the folder WINNT2.

Finally I have to format the drive and install a new OS.

If you could give any explanation for the above , really apprecited.
Kan

 

[Liquidlen]

I have that exact same machine purchased new from Dell.
If you bought from Dell with a Microsoft O/S disk for Win2k you have to watch which bios version is in your machine .That machine was released with Win Me design and Dell placed the O/S on a proprietary disc .If you try to move the O/S around or repair without their diagnostic tools and their O/S disk . It can be very frustrating.
When I updated to Win2k I was not successful until I installed a bios update (not the most recent) and did a clean install with the Microsft disk.
Take a moment and check the number of bios updates for that machine,paying attention to what each update corrected, there are a lot of them ,at last look 23
It is the one thing I hate about Dell ,They spend a lot trying to make their machines proprietary.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

When installing another instance of W2k (or any other OS), always do so in a separate partition.

My first HD has 4 partitions, C with W2K for daily use, D with programs and data, E for download and F with another W2K for burning CDs etc.
The second HD has also 4 partitions, with G for the pagefile (fixed size, same file used by both W2K's), H for storage of program-sources, I for DriveImage images and J for my old Cobol programs (FAT16)