russ said:
Just a thought, I've had this problem with an older computer and it wasn't the disk but memory that was bad. Could be the cd drive too. Try to boot a Knoppix live cd and see if it will boot, if you have one or know someone with one. That will test your memory and cd drive.
Hey Russ, thanks for the advice.
Unfortunately, Iv'e tried this, and it's where the problem gets really wierd.
It's actually a friends computer, so I just got it and everytime i booted it gave a message that went somewhat like this:
Failed to boot windows
C:/windows/hal.dll is missing
Something like that.
So, I tried to boot from CD, but the BIOS on this is SO wierd.
Sometimes it boots from CD and sometimes it doesn't.
It seems that it only boots from CD when it's a windows CD (iv'e tried home and professional), however, both those installations failed because files were "missing". So now I know it's not the CD.
I thought it was the CD Drive, also, so I tested two different CD drives, though both were pretty old so it seems they might be faulty. But I don't think it would be so bad that they would both miss those files.
I tried booting with knoppix, as well as with Windows Vista Beta 2, with no luck.
It gives me the NTLDR is missing error, probably because the windows xp installation failed in the middle of the whole thing.
It does boot from CD when a windows CD is in, which is ironicly pointless because I can't seem to install windows XP.
So, so far the boot errors have been:
-Hal.dll is missing restart computer
-Boot device cannot be found. Put boot media in (even when I do this error keeps appearing) or restart computer to boot with media.
-NTLDR is missing, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart
-Missing file: Keymgr.dll (during windows installation), if I skip, it seems that most of the following files are missing also.
I suppose I could try another source of ram.
But other things I thought of are:
Installation of new BIOS (if possible?).
Boot Rescure Floppy (hopefully someone can direct me to one.)
Thanks for all the help guys.