Windows fails to boot.

[Blind Dragon]

What is the beep code -> is it the same beep every 5 seconds or does it alternate one low one high, also could be one short one long.

 

[gohalos35]

same beep every 5 seconds... do you know who produces the BIOS for peicEmachines?

 

[Blind Dragon]

Repeated Long Beeps = almost always Memory Error

You should have 2 sticks of RAM

power down, remove 1 stick of RAM then try to boot into bios again, if it doesn't work try the other stick

 

[gohalos35]

okay the memory error is fixed but i still cant seem to get into bios, i held f1 and it still goes to the failed boot screen.... i did see a flash of the windows loading screen before it died this time.

 

[Blind Dragon]

instead of holding F1 try tapping F1 all through the boot up

 

[gohalos35]

im in bios del key did it

 

[gohalos35]

and what now lol... heres where my skill ends. heh.

 

[Blind Dragon]

excellent now use the arrow keys and go over to something similar to 'boot order' hit enter, then select your hard drive in the primary slot and hit enter, select your drive that has your winxp cd in it hit enter. F10 to save and exit.

 

[gohalos35]

okay i changed the boot order to hard disk, then cd rom.. still comes up as failed to start and wont respond when i try to start windows.

 

[gohalos35]

just realized my error and changed the order back to cdrom then hard drive

its booting from cd now... not sure how far this will get.

 

[Blind Dragon]

With the CD inserted and the boot order set to the CD rom being primary (make sure you saved changes before exiting) you get the same exact error. and what is it saying exactly

 

[gohalos35]

should i attempt to do a repair?

 

[gohalos35]

i had inadvertently changed to order to HD then CD... this is the first time ive been able to get booting from CD to work... perhaps this is progress.

 

[gohalos35]

before when i had the cd inserted and attempted to boot from the disc it just stopped responding.

 

[Blind Dragon]

from the welcome screen choose "R" for recovery.

You will be asked which Windows installation you wish to access. Choose the only one that should be there.

Now a prompt for your administrator password will appear. Enter it and continue (if no password, press enter).

 

[gohalos35]

okay i hit recovery now im in a screen that looks like a dos prompt.

i have a C:\ _

thats all that has happened

 

[gohalos35]

this is the exact screen i have:

Microsoft Windows XP (TM) Recovery Console

The Recovery Console provides system repair and recovery functionality.

Type EXIT to quit the Recovery Console and restart the computer.

C:\ _

 

[Blind Dragon]

okay at this point we have a few options -> tell me what you want to do and I will walk you through it.

A) Repair installation: Running a repair install of Windows XP can be a handy way of fixing the installation of XP without having to start totally over and deleting important data from your PC

B) We can try just fixing your boot sector and MBR, or replacing ntloader and see if that works.


Just let me know if you want to try some trial and error methods, because we don't know exactly what is causing the errors, or just do a repair install, it won't hurt anything to try a few things. you can actually type HELP at that screen to see all the codes for the different stuff we can do

 

[gohalos35]

i guess we can go the repair install method first.. if that doesnt work then trial and error it is.

 

[gohalos35]

i guess whatever gives me the best chance of not having to reload all my music and risk losing all my files that arent backed up.

 

[Blind Dragon]

To reinstall, not a full reinstall, just a repair reinstall

Type Exit

Reboot

At the welcome screen, choose enter.

Once at the license agreement, press F8.

At the next screen, choose to repair the selected Windows XP installation by pressing R.

The files will begin to install and then your PC will reboot. During the reboot you will be presented with option of booting from the CD again by pressing any key. Don't press anything. Allow it to finish the install without booting from the CD again.

 

[Blind Dragon]

For the other method I would try typing FIXBOOT at the c:\

Another repair that is quite common is FIXMBR

To replace the Ntldr file type COPY E:\i386\NTLDR C:
(E: is your CD rom drive so if its D: for cd rom use that)

 

[gohalos35]

NTLDR is missing.

Press any key to restart.

so i restarted and tried to replace the Ntldr file type using the instructions you gave me and it says: Access is Denied.

 

[gohalos35]

i also did the FIXBOOT already

 

[Blind Dragon]

sorry I left a step out because ntldr is a protected file type

you need to type:

Attrib -h -s C:\ntldr (to remove the protection)

Then the copy command

After the copy you need to type:
Attrib +h +s C:\ntldr (to add the protection)