XP won't Boot....weird one...

[BBoW]

Hi Everyone,

I've got a strange problem here that I can not seem to get fixed.

When I switch on the computer everything is fine up untill it's start loading Win XP, I get the splash screen (saying it's loading windows) and after that the screen is black, and nothing happens.

Could it be that it's not finding the harddrive?
I have tried running in safe mode but the same thing happens (black screen).

I haven't installed Service Pack 2, BUT...this problem occured after I had been away for a few days and my girlfriend had been on the computer. She says she didn't do anything...so maybe the automatic update feature installed SP2 by itself? Either way.....I don't know how to get this fixed.....

Anyone?


Thank you,


BBoW

 

[me(who else?)]

Does the computer restart? It could be a faulty PSU, or the Sasser virus. Try booting to safe mode...if you can't it sounds like a hardware problem.:dead:

 

[BBoW]

Thanx for the quick reply, really appreciate it.

Well..I tried running in SAFE mode, and what I get is....it starts loading a whole bunch of stuff, drivers I pressume. And it hangs again, the last file that's on the list is

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\Windows\system32\drivers\mup.sys

When I try running it in 'the last known good config' I get the same as with a normal boot.

I somehow have the feeling that it has something to do with my HD. So I tried loading the drivers for the HD with the Win XP cd (pressing F6 when it's loading and then pressing S). And it hangs at the bit where it says:

'Examining 1562335 Disk (0)....'

Do you recon this could be a faulty HD?

 

[me(who else?)]

Possibly... You might want to try a different HD (if oyu have access to one). There are also several (free) bootable disks which have drive fitness and corruption checks...I don't know any off the top of my head, but there's a Drive Fitness Diagnostic thread in the HDs section of the forums.:grinthumb

 

[howard_hopkinso]

Before you start suspecting your HD have you tried a reformat and reinstallation of sp1? Regards Howard:grinthumb

 

[me(who else?)]

Reformating usually doesn't help (unless you've deleted your files) because you aren't fixing the problem, just masking it. It's like trashing your car because the tire's flat.:dead:

 

[Goalie]

https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7602

Our drive diagnostics thread. Go here to start looking into wether or not your drive is bad.

It's possible that your file system is hosed. If you have a XP cd, you can boot to the recovery console, scan the disk, and run a sfc /checknow to try to get XP to boot.

 

[BBoW]

Hey guys,

Thanx for all the replies.
I tried a few more things...and nothing got it working. So I got an engineer to come and have a look at it. He suspected it was something with my Videocard (wrong drivers perhaps).

Anyways, he installed a new HD in my computer (same one as I had) and the computer is running again now.

BUT, there's a new problem now...I want to hook up that old HD as a slave onto this machine so that I can use both harddrives.
If it was a IDE drive I could have done it myself...but unfortunately It's SATA....something I'm not familiar with.

I hooked it up and the system would not boot up (same problem as I had earlier). I switched the connections and then Windows would boot up...but not recognize the second drive. I looked up at Western Digital's website to see how to set the jumpers but it is not described there at all. Also, the engineer told me that with SATA you would not need to reset jumpers, you could just plug it in and it should work.

So my question is...how do I hook this old HD up to my machine so that I can use it as a slave disk? here are the specs:

Western Digital Caviar
SATA drive 160 Gb

Both disks are identical.


Thanks!

 

[Masque]

Is this drive still under warranty? Also, did you try any bootable diagnostics on it?

 

[AdrianScotter]

Hi, to get your SATA drive to be the one that's booted from, go into your BIOS, into the 'boot' heading and select the Hard Disks entry, tell the BIOS that the SATA drive is the first drive. That should fix your problem.