Windows boot issues... any help?

T

theonlycarmire

Geek Trainee
Hey, so I got a slight problem with Windows XP 64-bit edition.

I have two SATA II hard drives attached, one is a Western Digital Raptor, 74 gigs at 10,000 RPM. The other is a 250 gig Western Digital at 7,200 RPM. I have Windows installed on my Raptor to take advantage of the fast search speed. The other day I reformatted just the Raptor to get rid of a bug, and reinstalled Windows. I reinstalled and booted up my drivers for everything, then rebooted the computer. Never changed my BIOS settings, so it boots as follows: CD-ROM first, then hard drive, first from the Raptor. I reboot with no disk in the ROM drive, and it tells me "boot disk error. insert correct disk and press enter." So I rebooted again, went into BIOS, and gave it the command to boot from hard drive only, and never boot from a disk. Again, same issue, it tells me boot disk error. I put in my Windows disk, and it loaded up completely fine.

SO, I can boot every time, but I have to have the Windows disk in my CD-ROM drive. It is doable, but I would like to get rid of this issue. Windows is installed perfectly well, and it runs just fine after I boot it, but I would like to get it booting itself from the hard drive. I cannot figure out if this is a software or hardware issue, so does anyone have any ideas/run across the same problem before??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Carmire
 
Try booting with your disc, and pressing R at the first prompt to go to the recovery console.

From there, type fixmbr to repair your master boot record, and also do fdisk /mbr to rewrite your bootloader.
 
It's weird, I dont really know what the issue is, it boots fine, it just wont boot from the hard drive. It's installed, I just have to put the CD in every time I want to boot...

I'm thinking about calling Microsoft (gasp) and trying to deal with their customer service...

I still haven't tried any of the earlier post's suggestions, but I'll give it a go.

By the way, does anyone know a good site that I can learn CSS/HTML on? I got a jpg that I want to turn into a website...

Any help would be appreciated...

-Carmire
 
1. Fix a corrupt Boot.ini

As the Windows XP operating system begins to load, the Ntldr program refers to the Boot.ini file to determine where the operating system files reside and which options to enable as the operating system continues to load. So if there's a problem rooted in the Boot.ini file, it can render Windows XP incapable of booting correctly.

If you suspect that Windows XP won't boot because Boot.ini has been corrupted, you can use the special Recovery Console version of the Bootcfg tool to fix it. Of course, you must first boot the system with the Windows XP CD and access the Recovery Console as described in #4.

To use the Bootcfg tool, from the Recovery Console command prompt, type

Bootcfg /parameter

Where /parameter is one of these required parameters:

* /Add--Scans the disk for all Windows installations and allows you to add any new ones to the Boot.ini file.
* /Scan--Scans the disk for all Windows installations.
* /List--Lists each entry in the Boot.ini file.
* /Default--Sets the default operating system as the main boot entry.
* /Rebuild--Completely re-creates the Boot.ini file. The user must confirm each step.
* /Redirect--Allows the boot operation to be redirected to a specific port when using the Headless Administration feature. The Redirect parameter takes two parameters of its own, [Port Baudrate ] | [UseBiosSettings].
* /Disableredirect--Disables the redirection.

2. Fix a corrupt partition boot sector

The partition boot sector is a small section of the hard disk partition that contains information about the operating system's file system (NTFS or FAT32), as well as a very small machine language program that is crucial in assisting the operating system as it loads.

If you suspect that Windows XP won't boot because the partition boot sector has been corrupted, you can use a special Recovery Console tool called Fixboot to fix it. Start by booting the system with the Windows XP CD and accessing the Recovery Console as described in #4.

To use the Fixboot tool, from the Recovery Console command prompt, type

Fixboot [drive]:

Where [drive] is the letter of the drive to which you want to write a new partition boot sector.

3. Fix a corrupt master boot record

The master boot record occupies the first sector on the hard disk and is responsible for initiating the Windows boot procedure. The master boot record contains the partition table for the disk as well as a small program called the master boot code, which is responsible for locating the active, or bootable, partition, in the partition table. Once this occurs, the partition boot sector takes over and begins loading Windows. If the master boot record is corrupt, the partition boot sector can't do its job and Windows won't boot.

If you suspect Windows XP won't boot because the master boot record has been corrupted, you can use the Recovery Console tool Fixmbr to fix it. First, boot the system with the Windows XP CD and access the Recovery Console as described in #4.

To use the Fixmbr tool, from the Recovery Console command prompt, type

Fixmbr [device_name]

Where [device_name] is the device pathname of the drive to which you want to write a new master boot record. For example, the device pathname format for a standard bootable drive C configuration would look like this:

\Device\HardDisk0
 
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