Windows XP Media Center Edition stuck on an acer laptop

[umermariner]

Hello,
I have Windows XP Media Center Eddition stuck on an acer laptop. It turns on, and goes to the Windows XP screen, the bar at the bottom moves for a bit, then it just seazes there. I have tried it in safe mode, tried to reboot it with the Back Up CD in (so that I can format it), but it still gets stuck at the same place.
I also went in setup (F2), but could not find the option of changing the boot up process through CD.
Any help?
Thanks.

 

[raybay]

This may be difficult to test for a fix. It appears that your hard drive is bad.
You might want to install the drive into an external USB drive of another computer, then download and run the Drive Fitness Test of the manufacturer (every manufacturer of laptop hard drives, except Toshiba, has one) to see if the drive is good.
If your budget permits, buy a new hard drive, and install windows. Then place the old drive into an the external USB enclosure (I like Vantec NextStar 3) and transfer your files from the old drive using the Windows software or drag and drop.
Then reformat and reinstall your hard drive to see if it is good.
The long way round is sometimes the shortest way home.

 

[umermariner]

This may be difficult to test for a fix. It appears that your hard drive is bad.
You might want to install the drive into an external USB drive of another computer, then download and run the Drive Fitness Test of the manufacturer (every manufacturer of laptop hard drives, except Toshiba, has one) to see if the drive is good.
If your budget permits, buy a new hard drive, and install windows. Then place the old drive into an the external USB enclosure (I like Vantec NextStar 3) and transfer your files from the old drive using the Windows software or drag and drop.
Then reformat and reinstall your hard drive to see if it is good.
The long way round is sometimes the shortest way home.

Thanks man. I thought of that... I think what I am gona do is, take its drive out, put it in enclosure, and then test it be connecting it with USB of another computer.

Lets see, if the drive is bad, then i ll get a new one.

But, dont you think if the drive is bad, I should be able to boot the computer up using a CD, or maybe USB Flash Drive?

 

[raybay]

Maybe a CD, but a bad hard drive can confuse things a lot.
You would need to change the boot order first.

 

[umermariner]

I tried to do that, but I could not find that option in the set up (where you go by pressing F2 in the startup)

 

[Sharam]

If you enter the Setup, you should be able to spot where to change boot order, there are not that many screens in the BIOS Setup!

Most notebooks you can press a key to select the boot device without going to the BIOS Setup, for Acer I think it is F12, some other brands use the Esc key or another Function key.