Big Problems Please Help !!!!!!!

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I had the same boot problem. I searched other fora and found that this can occur if the hard drive you are installing on is not connected as ide drive 1.

On my system (compaq 5000 series) I saw that the 2 cdroms were seen as
disks 1 and 2, and my hard drive was disk 4. So I removed the ide cable from
cdroms and connected it to hard drive and then took ide cable that was on hard drive and connected it to cdroms.

on booting system, I saw that hard disk was drive 2 and cdroms were drives 3 and 4. Install failed. I then disconnected hard drive from ide cable and connected it to the other connector on same ide cable. I rebooted and saw that hard drive was now disk1 and cdroms were disks 3 and 4.

I now reinstalled and system installed and booted fine.

net... one of the causes of this "NTLDR:couldn't open..." error is that hard drive is connected to wrong connector of IDE cable.

as an aside, this problem arose when someone installed new hard drive, and disconnected and reconnected everyting in the machine.

Further, I found it interesting that in the 'bad' configuration, I was able to install various LINUX systems and windows 2000 perfectly fine... only had problem installing Windows XP Home Edition.
 
I had same problems. After a few hours of frustrating i found this forum. I've tried what they said.
After setting up the HD to cable select, so it were Disk 1 it worked fine after reinstalling from xp-CD.
Thanks a lot for your help. :D
 
I have a similar problem. NTLDR missing press shift alt delete. I've seen some downloads, but mine is a 64 bit and I'm posting this on a 32 bit. tech support thinks i need a new hard drive.
 
What do you want to do?

Do you want to go back to ME, or move to XP? If trying to move to XP, NEVER EVER do an upgrade. It just makes a mess and does not work for the most part. Buy the full version and get it over with. BUT, before you do that, check your computer on the winxp hcl (hardware compatibility list). Compaqs are proprietary hardware and may even require it's own unique version of xp to work. Compaq's and gateways and others are known for this. If you setup the disk for NTFS, the restore to ME won't work, you need FAT32, enable large LBA for large disks. If you want to load XP, you can no longer upgrade since it is an upgrade disk, not a full version disk. You would have to format as fat 32, load ME, and upgrade IF the hardware is compatible. The fact that you're on ME already tells me it is older hardware.
Personally, I recommend getting rid of the compaq and going to a dell or better yet, building your own pc from scratch. I refuse to touch a compaq unless you beg me repeatedly and sweeten the pot.
What model compaq is it? I can tell you by the model if the upgrade will even work.
JerseyDevil
 
Hello and welcome to Techspot.

Unfortunately, this thread and the other one you`ve posted in are over a year old.

I posted in one or two old threads when I first joined Techspot lol.

Regards Howard :wave: :wave:
 
jerseydevil said:
Do you want to go back to ME, or move to XP? If trying to move to XP, NEVER EVER do an upgrade. It just makes a mess and does not work for the most part. Buy the full version and get it over with. BUT, before you do that, check your computer on the winxp hcl (hardware compatibility list). Compaqs are proprietary hardware and may even require it's own unique version of xp to work. Compaq's and gateways and others are known for this. If you setup the disk for NTFS, the restore to ME won't work, you need FAT32, enable large LBA for large disks. If you want to load XP, you can no longer upgrade since it is an upgrade disk, not a full version disk. You would have to format as fat 32, load ME, and upgrade IF the hardware is compatible. The fact that you're on ME already tells me it is older hardware.
Personally, I recommend getting rid of the compaq and going to a dell or better yet, building your own pc from scratch. I refuse to touch a compaq unless you beg me repeatedly and sweeten the pot.
What model compaq is it? I can tell you by the model if the upgrade will even work.
JerseyDevil
Click to expand...

I just wanted to say, on behalf of Compaq presario's...That I have owned mine since it was manufactured in 2003. I love it, its still fast, and it still plays all my favorite games with no problems. i have re-installed XP on it several times with no trouble whatsoever. as well as numerous hardware upgrades and changes, with little to no input on my part. Some compaq systems may have their issues, but no one computer is the same, and we all know that. So try not to be so hateful over compaqs, because this one I own is the best computer I have ever owned.
 
I love it when people post in super old threads. Bring it back from the dead! :grinthumb
Last post was two years ago! 11-15-2006
 
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