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#1
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all.
Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy. The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS. So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there. I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!! I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could use some help on this one. Thank you. -- The Seabat |
#2
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
The Seabat seabat boardermail.com wrote:
So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine Hopefully that was successful. When it's all done, be sure he has a USB drive and knows how to copy important files (like My Documents) to it from time to time. Good luck. |
#3
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
On 12/21/2011 12:04 AM, The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all. Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy. The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS. So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there. I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!! I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could use some help on this one. Thank you. Take a look here for tips on XP CD Boot problems. http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm |
#4
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all. Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy. The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS. So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there. I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!! I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could use some help on this one. Thank you. Did you look around for info on the partition structure ? http://en.community.dell.com/support.../19267286.aspx "First, a utility partition formatted in FAT-16 about 32 MB in size. Second should be the NTFS partition used for the C drive; this one will be the largest partition on the drive. Third should be a FAT-32 partition of two to three Gigabytes in size. This last is the restore partition." ******* The answer in that thread, also suggests the OS doesn't boot directly to the C: OS. It's doing something else first. Like, maybe the utility partition is some kind of boot manager ? Sites like this, have more info on dealing with Dells. But this still doesn't explain why you can't boot from CD. http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/fixes.shtml This thread, mentions pressing F12 to boot from CD. Why, I don't know... http://en.community.dell.com/support.../19400042.aspx You can't be in too much of a rush, with some of those machines. ******* When you receive a machine like that, a Linux LiveCD can be used for a first look. How careful you have to be, depends on the OS. For Win7, I'd probably use a Knoppix 5.3.1 DVD, simply because it won't attempt to write to a partition by default. Using Linux, gives an opportunity to become familiar with what is currently on the HDD. For an older machine like the Dimension 3000, even a current Ubuntu CD might be good enough for a look around. For an offline AV scan, you can use a CD like this one. Download is 196MB. You burn that with something like Imgburn or Nero, something that can convert an ISO9660 into a bootable CD. It will allow you to example the partitions, but might not have all the tools that a regular 700MB Ubuntu CD might. You can do a malware scan with this. But you can also poke around the partitions, like /discs/C: or the like. This even comes with a web browser, so while you're booted with that CD, you can continue to do searches in Google, looking for answers. Older versions might not have had the web browser included, so there was less opportunity for incremental exploration. http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208282163 Paul |
#5
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
On Dec 21, 12:04 am, The Seabat wrote:
Howdy: Got a Dell Demensions 3000 'puter that will not boot, at all. Had a virus, malware and other assorted boogyman type stuff on the neighbors machine and he decided to just plain install a fresh copy. The machine would not boot into windows (XP), would not let me at the restore points and would not let me repair, or install over the OS. So, new install. Went to safe mode to get all his data off the machine and then when tried to reboot in kept going to a black screen that said "2 active partitions". Could not get back into safe mode, could not even boot from a Win98 floppy to even see which partitions it was talking about. So, put the WinXP Home cd in drive and it booted to the same window that said "2 active partitions" and then would stop there. I went into the BIOS and made sure that the cd player was active and on the boot list (#1) and retried. No joy!! I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile or am I missing something? Sure could use some help on this one. Thank you. -- The Seabat If it's not booting off an optical disc, a) you've a disc unit with hardware issues, which may not necessarily limited to the drive, b) the BIOS is setup wrong, c) the XP disc media is compromised. (But of course, you already thought to boot with another disc, such as HIREM, to rule out the first two. Just in case your XP Home is a personal "safety backup," maybe you wanna talk about disc media factories, where failure rates come from, and how batches get rebadged before sold under various brandnames. . .hmmm?) |
#6
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
"The Seabat" wrote in message
... I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only after the OS has been loaded. -- Don Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) |
#7
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
"The Seabat" wrote in message
... I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only after the OS has been loaded. -- Don Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) |
#8
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
"The Seabat" wrote in message
... I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only after the OS has been loaded. -- Don Phillipson Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada) |
#9
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
"Don Phillipson" wrote in message ... "The Seabat" wrote in message ... I took the hard drive out and hooked it to my computer and got rid of all the partitions except for one Dell OEM 30MB that would not delete. Now computer says "0 active partitions" and still won't boot from the CD. I installed a new 500GB hard drive and it does the same thing. I took the battery out to clear the BIOS and still no joy. If I hit the ENTER key at the partition window I just get a DOS line that says "Press F1 to retry boot or F2 to enter setup" F2 takes me to setup, but F1 just returns me to the 0 partition window. Is this machine ready for the junk pile How is the keyboard connected? If USB you may need to adjust the BIOS to make the KB fully functional during cold boot rather than only after the OS has been loaded. Thought it was that important, to post it three times? Just messing with you; my ISP does that occasionally, too. :-) -- SC Tom |
#10
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Can't boot to Windows XP install disc
SC Tom wrote:
"Don Phillipson" hiccup triple Thought it was that important, to post it three times? Just messing with you; my ISP does that occasionally, too. :-) I notice that they have precisely the same time in the Date and/but the XRef is sequential incrementing by 1; but the mid/s have much more difference than that from each other, but the first part is still in the same 'order' as the XRef sequence, considering that numerals must come before letters as they do in hex if that is some kind of system like z-base 32 using lowercase. Message-ID: Message-ID: Message-ID: -- Mike Easter |
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