Trying to fix a PC for a friend. Its kinda old but its a XP system worth saving for something. Any way booted it up and XP tries to boot but can't...(I do see the XP screen with the blue streamer) set up and sends the monitor into hibernation. Tried safe mode no luck. Changed the bios to let it boot from a boot disk i got offline from Free Boot Disk. Once I did that, it starts to boot and goes into this DOS window and starts asking me for commands like A:\_ what does all that mean. I just wanted the computer to start up so I can reinstalled XP...lol. I know beat me up for being so naive. I can save this computer if I can get it open again can someone help me.
LMFAO that what a boot disc does boot disc runs on dos, A boot disk is a removable digital data storage medium, normally read-only, that can load (boot) an operating system or utility program. a boot disc can be a floppy disc, a cd, or even a usb flash thumb, a boot cd is used for Operating system installation. Data recovery. Hardware or software troubleshooting. Customizing an operating environment. Software demonstration. etc im not pretty sure what you want to do but it seems your boot cd is not loading up correctly if it a cd make sure you change your bios settings to the correct booting sequence drive.
Thanks Busta, I did set boot sequence, the boot disk sends the computer into DOS mood. The thats the issue. I tried a an operating system disk, but it want work can't get computer to boot. I have a Bootdisk on CD, it is first in line in the sequence. Then the A drive and HDD.
If the comp aint booting or freezes at welcome screen there's more than likley a corruption in the master boot record if you have an xp disk you may be able to use that to boot off of, assuming the hdd is ok,failing that remove the hdd and put it in an external case and run checkdisk ,(before putting hdd back in to test if chkdsk worked you should have removed power cord and cmos battery to reset BIOS),if CHKDSK failed there are other options but my knowledge is limited so what i'd do next is check for any data you want to recover by putting it back inside the external case then re-attach hdd to computer and reformatt with clean windows install,if you keep searching the net there are apps available to repair the MBR like FDISK but don't ask me how to use it ..lol..,there might be help at link below or at least some guides,yes they talk about ghost but nightowl is pretty on to it http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
Thank you very much, I agree I will just wipe the HDD clean and start over. There is nothing that important on it to save so... Thanks you guys and have a good day.
