Hey everyone, i have a huge problem,

I was upgrading my g/f computer from ME to XP professional, when half way through the install the computer restarted and now it won't even boot up,


I turn on the pc and it won't recognise or boot off any of the drives, therefore won't activate the keyboard or monitor, so can't even get into a dos menu or anything. the PC now has no operating system at all, well so it seems. I tried to put in the recovery cd's, but because a:/ is not booting it won't do anything.
I really need some help can somebody please suggest some tricks.

Please help

Optiv

.................

Did you check that your PC can handle XP? It needs quite a bit more hardware than ME.

Not sure if it's a typo but you want to set the boot order to the cd-rom drive not the a:/ drive, to boot from the recovery disks. If the PC won't post you need to clear the cmos (reset the bios). Should be a jumper for that, you do it with the power OFF.

Thanx, would you be able to explain a little more in regards to reseting the bios?... i have the hhd in front of me but not to sure wear to place the jumper/s.

To reset the bios you move a jumper on the motherboard. The motherboard manual should tell you where it is. You move it over for a few seconds and then move it back. Make sure the power is off and unplug the power cord. If you can't find the jumper you can pull the motherboard battery out for 5 or 10 minutes. This will reset the bios back to the failsafe default settings. If it still won't post after doing this post back and we'll go from there.

Ok i've got the Pc to boot - !!!

Progress every so slowly

- now when i put in the compaq recovery cd - it brings up the quick restore intro and then hangs - can't do anything after that but restart !! !

Any ideas from here on in ??

Thanks

Optiv

Welcome To Techspot

Please post a few more computer specs .. If i am following you correct you have or had ME installed? and try to place on xp is this correct? You also have a Compaq how fun and the recovery disk will not do anything?? You more than likely messed up the MBR on the harddrive there are ways around this let us know..

yes, have had windows M.E originally and tried to do a fresh install of XP.

When installing Xp, after partition of the drive, it restarted and said couldn't find such and such partition. I'm thinking that this PC can't handle Xp.

After having problems with the computer not booting up after this install, i managed to get it to boot, i put the recovery cd in and it loads up to the intro screen then stops and i can't do anything but restart.

Don't know where to go from here, or if it can be fixed! - i'm not worried about getting XP to run, i just want to re-install the original OS. (M.E).

Hope this helps.
Thanks

Optiv

Hi,

In the bios, set first boot device as CD-ROM. Then place an xp cd and restart ur comp. It will start with home page of installation of xp. Because, XP cd itself is a bootable cd. Later u can install the xp, and have the system working.

Just try out...and send the updates in current thread.

It's possible that in your attempt to install XP that the hard drive may have been formated in NTFS. ME wants FAT 32 so maybe that is what is messing you up at this point. If you boot up with an ME or windows 98 boot floppy you can use fdisk to delete the NTFS partition. If you don't have a boot floppy you can get on at bootdisk.com. If it is NTFS you will need to use the delete non dos partition option in fdisk. Once you delete it you can then create a new one and format it in fat 32. If the master boot record is messed up fdisk /MBR should fix it.

Ok, i managed to get into the menu fdisk with my boot disk.

i deleted the partition, and created a new. I DON"T THINK i did it right -

which one do i make the new partition? and most of all how do i make it FAT32????... because when i created one to see if i would work, it still wouldn't recognise the drive as FAT32?....

I then tried to boot the cd from dos prompt but didn't work, maybe because the hard disk hasn't be written to???......

What to i do and how do i do it? if anyone has the time to explain !!

Thanks for your help so far

Optiv

How to use fdisk and partition your drive.
Formating the drive is what determines the file system. Fdisk only partitions it.
You need at least one primary dos partition and it needs to be the active partition. If there is more than one partition you will also have one extended dos partition containing the logical dos drives. The more partitions on the drive the more logical dos drives you will have. After you setup your partitions you use the format utility to format the drive. If it's a windows 98 boot-floppy it has the format utility and will format in fat 32 by default. Just type format C: from the dos prompt A:\.

Ok, got all that sorted,

Created a primary partition and formated c:/ - still can't get the restore cd to boot.????

any ideas guys??

Ok, that would be the the Compaq ME restore CD?
What happens exactly?
You say you can't boot from the CD, is the cd-rom set as the first boot device?
You may have to also hit the any key when prompted during the post to boot from the cd-rom.

Ok, C: is formated in FAT32 and set as the active partition.

I can then boot of the startup disk into dos prompt,. From their it loads my cd drives D: and E:, i can't run the cd at all if a command it from dos prompt. it displays this message.

CDR101: Not ready reading drive E
Abort, Retry, Fail?

??????????????? don't know what t do

When i start the computer up without the startup disk, it still hangs and all i have is the little cursor in the top left blinking at me.

Another thing you can do is shutdown your pc. open it turn of mainboard
make sure it is connected to the central proccesing unit connect the jumper to the HDD and CPU to ram to make data flow more accuratly.

try messing around with the options more on the restore disk. tell us exactly what options there are here.

Can't get into any menu's on the recovery disk, it hangs.

I tried to install XP again after formating C: in FAT32 manually through dos prompt.

The first part of the installation worked, but when prompted to restart the pc, it comes up with this

Couldn't open drive multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)
NTLDR: Couldn't open drive multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)

What the hell does that mean

I'm soooo stuck can't get anything installed