O negative
Posts: 19 +0
I'm trying to troubleshoot a Dell laptop with XP (professional) that won't boot.
I also have an identical machine with nearly identical software on it that is working just fine.
I burned a CD with boot.ini, ntdetect.com, and ntldr on it that were copied from the good machine. I chose the bootable data disk option and used a standard English boot image supplied by the burning software.
When I "boot" from this disk from either machine I only get Dr. DOS. (Which is crummy because Dr. DOS won't even run CHKDSK!) I'm thinking that I don't have a proper boot disk. Is the "boot image" redundant? Should I just reburn it as a plain data disk? The burning software also gives the option to browse for my own boot image, but I don't know where (what directory) it might be.
Meanwhile, I do have a Linux live CD that boots fine on the bad machine.
I also have an identical machine with nearly identical software on it that is working just fine.
I burned a CD with boot.ini, ntdetect.com, and ntldr on it that were copied from the good machine. I chose the bootable data disk option and used a standard English boot image supplied by the burning software.
When I "boot" from this disk from either machine I only get Dr. DOS. (Which is crummy because Dr. DOS won't even run CHKDSK!) I'm thinking that I don't have a proper boot disk. Is the "boot image" redundant? Should I just reburn it as a plain data disk? The burning software also gives the option to browse for my own boot image, but I don't know where (what directory) it might be.
Meanwhile, I do have a Linux live CD that boots fine on the bad machine.